


The dragon consumes us

by Pandigital



Series: The dragon is sated at high noon [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Artificial Intelligence, Attempted Brainwashing, Brainwashing, Dragon!Hanzo, Dragon-Blooded, Finally talking about the past and getting your shit worked out, God Complex, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Knotting, Loss of Control, Loss of Identity, M/M, Mates, Medical Procedures, Medical Trauma, Mentions of Abortion, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Possessive Behavior, Psychological Torture, Rape, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, Rape/Non-con Elements, Redemption, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Hatred, Slut Shaming, Torture, bottom!jesse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-07-21 21:57:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 33,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7406512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pandigital/pseuds/Pandigital
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The dragon knew it the second he saw Jesse. Jesse doesn't think he is worthy enough to be loved. In the end, only something as horrible as meeting God could make Jesse think otherwise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The first time

The first time that Hanzo met Jesse McCree was when he first joined OverWatch, his brother and his mentor on either side of him. Genji and Zenyatta help him to sneak into the country. America had become more and more xenophobic after the wars, and its was more dangerous to be visiting. Since what they were doing was, in fact, a capital offence by the UN and most every country agreed to this, if they were caught they would be placed in a black hood and no one would be able to find them. The threat of Talon was like a hovering shadow of a hawke and they were mice. Jesse McCree was everything Hanzo drooled over. Even as a teenager men like McCree had made his pants tight.

Rough, rugged, seemingly witty and polite, and that voice had sent a waterfall of lust down his spine. Jesse was smoking on the curb, hat pulled down and almost shot them when they jumped down from the roof next to him. He had eyes like molten earth, dark and deep and they were framed by long, black lashes. He looked at Genji for a moment, cigar clenched in his teeth and then he smiled, putting his gun away and let his metal hand rest on his hip(god those hips, he would love to bend this man over and plow him into the mattress so hard that those hips would be black with the bruises he could leave behind), and chuckled at them. 

“Well, shit, ya damn near scared me half ta death! It’s good to see ya’ll again.” he said and tipped his hat down at them. Zenyatta gave a small bow of his head and went into the building. Genji put his hand on his shoulder, the metal semi-warm, and he used his other hand to gesture between them. 

“Jesse McCree, this is my older brother, Hanzo Shimada. He was the heir to our clan before all of this came to pass. Hanzo, this is Jesse McCree, a former outlaw and my dear friend from my old BlackWatch days.” 

Jesse held out his hand, “Pleasure.” 

He shook his hand, “Genji rarely speaks so highly of others.” 

Jesse laughed and put of his cigar with his boot and then crossed his arms, “I ‘member. This little shadow used to be downright nasty ta everyone. He’s grown up though, and that’s all that matter.” 

“I apologize for my brothers behavior.” Hanzo said. 

“Ya don’t need to apologize for somethin’ I took offense in, Shimada-san.” he nodded at them, “We best get in, ‘fore we attract the wrong kind of attention.” 

As Genji takes him to his room he looks him up and down and then chuckles. 

“What?” Hanzo asks his little brother. 

“Is your inner dragon marking him or is it a passing interest?” 

Hanzo can feel his inner dragon growl. It liked the smell and look and overall everything of Jesse McCree. Not a mate, maybe, but someone that the dragon would not maul in the act of passion. Genji had his still, and had marked Zenyatta as a mate. Hanzo had wondered how that worked but decided he didn’t want to know how robots...mated. He knew how dragons did. A knot and a mating mark and two whole weeks of fucking each other raw. He shivered at the mental image of Jesse debased beneath him. He had just met this man. 

“I do not know.” 

Genjis chuckled and then looked over his shoulder before looking at him again, “Jesse likes to...well, he likes to be dominated. Use that information as you please.” 

“You make him sound easy.” 

“Hardly. But his last flame liked to brag. That man had taken his virginity and bragged. From what he told me the last time we talked, he has not been with anyone since he left OverWatch before the Swiss Explosion.” 

Hanzo could feel his inner dragon perk up and preen at this. He could make himself seem like a better partner than this last man. 

“You shouldn’t gossip.” he said and closed the door on his brother instead. 


	2. Knock a pup off a gut wagon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hanzo knows English. He can speak it fine. Jesse doesn't, it seems, speak English. Or at least a version of it that Hanzo can understand all the time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My dad once looked like blonde-haired blue eyed Jesse McCree. He is true born Hill Billy Southern. I have heard all of these southern sayings my whole life and I swear to GOD, being able to translate deep south should count on job applications and stuff like that. Anyway, please enjoy.

The second time that they spend any time together for longer than five minutes, they are both hiding from sniper fire on Route 66, behind a thick boulder next to a large road welcoming people to Route 66, sign and a wide space before an abandoned gas station/mechanic shop. He is waiting for the moment when the sniper needs to reload, he holds an arrow at the ready when he hears the sound of spurs coming at a running pace before Jesse slides behind the boulder, kicking up dust as a Talon agent follows. Jesse spins on his knees to shoot behind him, dropping the agent with one sure shot to the head. He spins again in the same movement to his feet and he looks at Hanzo and tips his hat at him. Hanzo bows his head and turns away. He aims and shoots, the death cry of a Talon agent carries on the wind as he nocked another arrow. Jesse is lighting his cigar and Hanzo looks at him. 

The sniper knows they are hiding here, smoking will not help them, but it won’t kill them either. Jesse holds up another, unlit cigar out toward him, “Smoke?” 

Hanzo shakes his head, “I partake rarely. Thank you for the offer.” 

“It ain’t nothing, Shimada-san.” he answers. Hanzo knows that Jesse is an American. He is the kind of American that should be rude and rough and too...barbaric for knowing that until last names are common in Japan. First names are only used by close friends and family. He calls his brother by his first name. He had asked Genji about this and he had said that he gave Jesse permission years ago. 

He was raised, Genji said with a snort, as Jesse had put it, by running all over hell's half acre with two older sisters and mother who put the smooth talking of the devil to shame. Hanzo had no idea what that meant by any stretch of his imagination. 

“Hanzo. You may call me by my first name, since we will be working together. And,” he said and looked away, lest the blush he could feel creeping onto his face be seen by this handsome man, “my brother speaks well of you.” 

Jesse laughs at this, a smooth and rough smokey laugh that makes Hanzo shiver and the dragon inside of him purr in lustful delight, “Well, thank ya kindly, Hanzo. Call me Jesse.” His name should not sound like liquid sin from this man, but it does. IF they were not in the middle of a fight, and IF Jesse was more open about his taste, Hanzo would slam him against the rocks and fuck him raw. Make him scream and cry and become brain dead to nothing but him. His inner dragon does purr deeply at that thought. The sniper fire has gone silent and they both ready their weapons, lowering their voices as they did so.

“My brother often talks about the old days. He says you have not changed much.” 

“He’s changed plenty enough for the both us. Calmed down a lot, and finally stopped wearing them damn skinny jeans. I swear ta God, ‘hem jeans were so tight on his punk ass I would see his religion.” He slowly takes off his hat and throws up into the air as hard as he can. The sniper lets a round go, missing the hat as it falls back on his head. Hanzo spots a gun man trying to sneak around the back and shoots him in the head the next time he peeks around the corner. Jesse gives a low whistle and a quick applause.   
Hanzo remembered those jeans. The neon green-white washed ones. He shudders at the memory of them, even if he doesn’t know what Jesse has said about them, “He did enjoy wearing them. I told him that if he kept dressing like that he might be picked up by...perverts.” 

“I once told him that if he didn’t change ‘hem damn thing into a nicer pant that people would see clear to the promised land when they looked at him. He just rolled his eyes at me.” Jesse laughs, “Not that I was much better. I used to be a right pain in the ass when I was younger.” 

“I doubt you were as bad as my brother.” Hanzo says with a smirk. 

Jesse gets a far away look in his eyes as he crushes his cigar under his boot, “I was worse.” 

A shadow pass on the roof and they both see it but act as if they don’t. Let the enemy think them fools. It is easy to eat stupid pray, and dragons were not above an easy meal when it presented itself, “All of us were young once, Jesse.” Hanzo says and claps him on the shoulder, “No one is perfect.” 

“Well, thank ya, Hanzo.” he says and fires his gun quickly over Hanzo’s shoulder and the body of the sniper drops. It is not Windowmaker, but it is one less enemy in the world. Once the payload is safe and they all climb back into the jet carrier he sits next to Jesse who again offers his a cigar. He once more declines but offers up his sake. Jesse smiles and says he isn’t much of a drinker anymore but thanks him anyway. Lucio rolls in with a whoop and words of comradery on his lips. 

76 huffs past him and Tracer nods as she takes the pilot's seat. The Russian woman with pink hair, who towers over everyone, borders last and sits now next to Lucio who seems starstruck by her. Hanzo knows that feeling well. He is sure that everyone can see it on his face. Jesse shakes his head as Lucio tries to sweet talk the very large Russian woman, who just smiles down him and nods her head. He looks at Hanzo, points at Lucio and says, “This boy has such bad pick up lines they could knock a pup off a gut wagon.” 

“I do not know what that means.” Hanzo says slowly as they take off from the dry heat of the American southwest. 

Jesse blinks at him for a long moment and then smiles, wide and full of teeth and God he is beautiful. The dragon surges forward and he only just manages to catch it before it can jump out of his skin and curl around Jesse in a possessive hug, “It means they stink.” 

“Knock a pup off a gut wagon...is an American way to say something stinks?”

“It’s the southern way.” 

“Is American not a land of outlaws and cowboys?” 

“I wish.” 


	3. Dragons love who they chose; whore love those who pay them.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hanzo doesn't know what to do now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, real quick, let's get this out the way. I HC that Jesse is half-Native American. You don't like then meet me in the pit bitches. I am, half Navajo, my father is white. My mother is not. I look white, all of my siblings do not. So yeah, again, fight me. Some words I straight up do not know in Navajo because my mother was never taught us. The Japanese is from Google. The pain train has arrived and the next stop is "ohgodwhy?" city. Please exit the train now if the new tags are triggering. Thank you and be safe.

The third time that they meet its is much more peaceful. Jesse is in the living room with Lucio and D.Va, both on the floor as he lounges on the couch, playing video games. He is half asleep and smiles at their cheers and half hearted taunt at each other. His arm is missing, and the sight makes Hanzo do a double take. The t-shirt he wears shows that he has only a shoulder and nothing more than that from where his prosthetic usually is. He comes to the couch and leans on the back, arms folded and supporting him, looking down at Jesse and the two children. But Jesse cracks one eye open and smiles at him. 

That smile makes Hanzo warm. He waves with his flesh hand, a two finger salute from the head. His hat is missing and those semi-long brown locks cover the armrest. They curl at the ends. Hanzo nods his head down at him and then points to the children. Jesse rolls his eyes. He curls his fingers for Hanzo to get closer and he does. 

He wants to lean all of the way over and kiss Jesse until he is a moaning mess that is begging to be mated within an inch of his life. 

Instead he lowers his head and Jesse leans up and whispers in his ear, “Some game that D.Va is livestreaming. I checked on it an’ it’s fine. No one knows where she really is, she’s good at hiding her IP ad’ress. I was napping and they took over the damn living room.” 

D.Va gives a groan and twist to glare at them, “Stop being all lovely dovey with each other! My viewers came to see me kick ass, especially Lucios, not watch two old grandpas kiss.” 

Hanzo doesn’t jerk back, but slowly looks up at her and gives her a smirk, “That is half the internet, two old men kissing. You should be thanking us for making your view count go up.” 

Jesse laughs, a chuckle under his breath as he lies back down. Lucio snorts and goes back to the game. D.Va smirks back at him, “Didn’t think you had a sense a humor.” 

“I misplace it on occasion.” 

Jesse does laugh loudly at this and sits up, getting off the couch and dragging Hanzo away by the shoulder. Hanzo lets himself, because Jesse has hold of the dragons and they purr and coo at the warm flesh given freely to them. Jesse takes them to the kitchen and leans on the counter by the coffee maker and Hanzo leans on the kitchen table across from him. Jesse shakes his head with a last stifled giggle and looks at him with a sparkle in his brown golden colored eyes, “My, my, my. If I never again hear such snark I shall think that Tuesday shall never come again.” 

Hanzo...has no idea what that means. Another southern saying maybe? He can not guess at his odd choice in an  _ American,  _ mate. While it was true that his family was no longer as powerful as it had been when his grandmother or father had ruled as head, the clan as a whole was still something to be feared. He had asked, as well as he could, when he and Genji had been sent to Hanamura on a recon mission. While the thought of an  _ American,  _ as his chosen mate was laughable, it was not unheard of for the dragon to pick outside of their nation. His grandmother, a woman who had been called The Red Terror before her death, had married a man from another Yakuza family, but she born his father from her lover.

A man who was from Germany. His mother had been, to the best of his knowledge, Japanese. He had not asked about a male mate. Jesse rubbed at his shoulder and Hanzo felt his eyes linger on the stump that was left, “If the doctor fixing your arm today, Jesse?” 

Jesse shakes his head, “Naw. It gets heavy sometimes and I gotta let my skin breath. It don’t bother me none.” 

“I am impressed that your balance is not off with one of your heavier limbs missing.” 

“ _ Níłchʼi atsʼáozʼaʼ _ (Phantom limb).” 

Hanzo can feel himself blink slowly at the deadpan way Jesse says it as he crosses his ankles while he leans, “I’m...sorry?” 

Jesse has to think for a moment, and then itches his head, “I think in English it’s called...um, phantom limb. Some words I only know in Navajo, sorry.” 

Hanzo often forgets that Jesse was born from a Navajo woman and a white father. His sisters look like their mother, very Native, but he does not. He looks very white, but not really. Hanzo can see the tallness from the other Navajo he had seen when they had been in the American Southwest. The high cheek bones. The strong shoulders and jaw. Slim and eye catching waist. 

He looks just white enough to blend in but not enough to hide forever. Hanzo knows what it is like to try and remember words for those who do not speak the same mother tongue. He thinks for a moment and then says, “ _ Anata wa anata no haha ni hanasu hōhō o ki ni, kanojo wa anata no supīchi o okonaimashita _ .(Mind how you speak to your mother, she gave you speech).”

“Pardon me?” 

“You are not the only one who has to remember to speak English.” 

Jesse laughs, he is easy to laugh and slow to anger. Hanzo is not that way, he knows. He is quick to anger and slow to laugh. Laughter was not allowed after his mother passed away. She and his sister. Childbirth is to women what a knife fight is to a man. Death waits. Jesse gives him that same bright smile, “How do ya say, mother, in Japan?” 

“You wish to know?” 

“I’ll trade ya. You give me words from your mother and I’ll give ya words from mine.” 

Hanzo nods his head before he can stop himself, “Very well. The word mother in Japan is said as  _ oka-san.”  _

“Oh-ke-sun?” 

“Ohhh-kaaa-san.” 

“Ohhh-keee-san.” 

Hanzo moves toward him and grabs his flesh hand and rest it on his throat, his trigger worn thumb resting in the hollow. A killer knows the throat is easy to abuse. Easy to make blood weep and the enemy drown. Jesse is eyeing him and he says in again, drawing out the “ka” until Jesse does the same. He can feel it now, how the middle should sound. They repeat it at each other until Jesse is passable, barely, in the word. He has been looking at Jesse right in the eyes and only now does he see that they are very close.

Jesse has a loose hand on his shoulder where he has moved it. Hanzo has moved him onto the counter, his legs spread wide as Hanzo presses into him. Both of his hands are on Jesse's hips and his lips hover near the other man's. Close. Hanzo can taste the cigar smoke and smell his sweat. The dragons are curling so deeply into his stomach and blood that he can not pull back but he does not move closer now that he sees. Jesse, looks, distant. 

His eyes are watching but there is a door ready to be slammed down. He does not know if he wants this or not. Genjis words come to haunt him. The last and only lover had used and abused him. Hanzo leans his head on the shoulder of the missing limb and closes his eyes. 

“I will trade you secrets,” Hanzo whispers into his shoulder, “for my mother tongue.” Dragons do not trade. They trade nothing and take everything. Dragons only give and trade with loved ones and family. Jesse McCree is not...well, no, that is a lie. The dragon has marked him. Hanzo would make an ocean of blood for him if he wished it. But the dragons twist and curl into each other. 

Words are powerful. They hold deep and old magic. Words spoken to you with love, like how your mother teachs you, are very powerful, for that is a passing on of knowledge. To trade it away is suicide. Hanzo makes the deal anyway. 

“Like what?” Jesse whispers back at him, his hand now in the middle of Hanzo's chest, his pinky close to his exposed nipple. 

Hanzo wants to ask so many things. The name of his lover. How he lost his arm. Did he like slow and deep kissing or harsh and rough and quick? Would he let Hanzo bath him in attention? Would he let Hanzo smother him in love and adoration? Does he know that Hanzo loves him and has no idea how to him expect now, trapped between a wall and his body? 

Hanzo wants to ask so many things, “Do I scare you?”

“No.” 

“Even if you knew something terrible about me?” 

Jesse moves his hand to Hanzo neck and rubs his thumb in soothing circles, “I have worse ghost haunting me.” 

“I...am a dragon.” he says and pulls back so Jesse can see him. Scales and fangs and glowing blue eyes and not a single human thing left except his overall face shape. Jesse smiles at him. 

“I figured. Your brother looked like this too, once.” he runs his thumb under one of Hanzo's eyes, the flesh sending fire over his cool scales, “But I have a bigger secret. It made your brother cry the first time he heard it.” 

Hanzo lets his human flesh cover him again, “What?” 

Jesse moves quick as lighting and grips his jaw in an iron grip, locks his legs around Hanzo and bares his teeth as he hisses at him, “I joined a gang when I was 17 and got snatched up by Blackwatch not too long after. I killed and lied and cheated and stole. But you wanna know the worse thing I did was Hanzo? Do you?” 

Hanzo doesn’t. But he does, “Yes.” 

“I was a whore. I sold my body after my first lover fucked me raw. Did you know that? He fucked me while I was half drunk in front of ten other guys and then let them have a turn at me. He was twenty-eight. I was used like a toy for years until Overwatch cut the Deadlock gang a deal. I hoped he wouldn’t take it, not like how I did, but he did.”

“Jesse-”

“Fuck me, he did. And I thought it would stop. I wasn’t going to be a toy anymore. But it didn’t stop. Blackwatch was just as bad. No. They were worse.”

Hanzo tried to pull his grip from his jaw, “Jesse-”

“I had to sell my soul to keep my sanity and I hate myself. So tell me, Hanzo Shimada, do you still wanna fuck the dirty American whore? I can make you scream. I can ride a cock like its a damn horse. I can take a beating. Hell, you wanna stick something inside me, go on ahead. I know I can survive and I know I can wait you out.”

He can feel his anger rising and boiling inside of him. He wants to kill something. He wants to make Jesse stop hurting. He can’t even make himself stop hurting. He tries instead to get Jesse to unhook his legs from around his waist, “Jesse, let me explain-”

“I ain’t stupid. I might be a slut but I ain’t stupid. I seen the way you look at me when you think I don’t see you. You wanna fuck me all you had to do was fucking ask. So come on, tell me, do you wanna fuck me like the cheap whore I am, Lord Hanzo Shimada?” 

Hanzo looks him right in eye and yanks his face out of the iron grip and says in a steady and clear voice, “I want to make love to you. I want to worship you. I want to belong to you and you to me and no one else. I want you to be happy.” 

Jesse lets him go and moves off of the counter, towering over Hanzo, and sneers down, “Ain’t no such thing as happy. That is a dream the world had as it lie dying, Shimada.” 

“Dragon do not sleep and they do not die.” 

“Whores do.” 

“They also can be loved.” 

“By who?” 

“Dragons. Dragons only mate with those they choose to love and cherish. No one else can make them happy. They only want to make their mate happy.” 

Jesse scoffs, “I said once ‘efore and I’ll say it again. Ain’t no such thing as happy, Shimada.” 

“Let me try to woo you then. If I fail then you are right.” 

Jesse smirked and moved around him, “I wager you don’t make it a year before ya give up and go after someone else. But if you ever just want a pity fuck, my door is always open.” 

Hanzo turned to watch him walk out of the kitchen, calling after him, “I will marry you, Jesse McCree. If it is the last thing I do, I will marry you and love you for all my remaining years.” 

Jesse stopped and glared at him over his shoulder, “It’s McCree to ya. Jesse is for friends only.” 

Hanzo didn’t know what to do. 


	4. It's not an apology but its a start Hanzo Shimada.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's not a healing cock. It healing kisses there is a huge difference.

Genji takes one look at him that night and snaps at him, “What did you do?” 

“I told the truth.”

He slaps his hand on his head and ushers him into his room. Zenyatta hovers near the window, looking out. He knows the secret. Hanzo can smell the scent of mate and mating in the room and on the omnic. His brother had never been very good at keeping secrets. 

“Tell me.” Genji says as he sits on their bed. Hanzo leans on the wall opposite him and he does. He tells him everything. Genji takes off his mask to glare at him properly, “You sounded him, marked him as a mate. And now you know that he doesn’t have a good basis for relationships and instead of back off you...confess?” 

“I panicked.” Hanzo mutters. 

Zenyatta pipes up, “Dragons must be cautious around non-dragon mates. You understand what marking and sounding is. To Jesse McCree, he thinks it is old habits he thought himself above now.” 

“On top of that,” Genji snaps at him, “but you are not as subtle as you think you are.” 

Hanzo begs to differ. But he listens instead. He has a habit of brushing off his brother's advice. He has since learned from those mistakes, “I didn’t realize what I was going until it was too late. I will try to amend my mistake.” 

Genji sighs and hangs his head as he rubs at his temples before he points one sleek finger at him, “You will apologize to Jesse. He is my friend, Hanzo, and your mate. You will show him the respect he is entitled to and nothing short of that. But do so in the morning. Jesse has a habit of holding grudges when he isn’t given time to think everything over.” 

“I will. I swear it on my honor.” 

Hanzo leaves for his room after that, taking a shower and thinking of how to express his apology. As he steps out of the shower and wraps a towel around his waist he hears something in his room. He grabs his knife he keeps with him and moves slowly into the room, shutting off the bathroom light as he does so. The assassin is a poor one, leaving the single lamp by his bed on. Until he sees the shadow at the window, naked and tan and his throat dries. He drops the knife. Jesse isn’t wearing his arm and he looks tiny without it.

Hanzo stays in his spot. The dragons want to take and claim and possess. He holds them tightly to his soul. Jesse doesn’t turn around when he speaks. 

“All you had to do was ask, ya know.” 

“What I wanted,” Hanzo says slowly, “should be given freely. Not taken by force.” 

Jesse does turn to look at him, exposed and naked and Hanzo wants to sink his teeth into that flesh, “Cut the bull, we both know sex is just sex. Ain’t nothing more to it than that.” 

“What about love?” Hanzo blurts out. Jesse chuckles, a sad and tired sounding thing, and he moves closer to Hanzo. 

“Love ain’t nothing but a catchy song.” he stands before Hanzo and traces the line where the towel hides his manhood. Hanzo doesn’t move and it has become very hard to breath. 

“I do not think so.” 

“Let’s find out.” 

Hanzo looks at his lips and then up at Jesse, “No.” 

Jesse blinks slowly at him, “No?” 

“I will not take advantage of you. I will not be added to the list of...monsters who made you feel less than human.” He places his hands on his towel and wraps it around Jesse instead. Jesse looks down and takes a whole step back, eyes wide. Hanzo doesn’t move, instead holding his arms out so Jesse can truly see. Jesse blushes as pink as a cherry blossom tree. 

“You’re-uh...well….damn.” He says and covers his mouth. Hanzo knows he is in fact well endowed. Jesse is not small but he is not like Hanzo either. Jesse is average and that is fine. Hanzo had been bred to  _ breed  _ his mate. Long and thick and heavy. One man he had bedded said it was a monster cock. Hanzo would not tell him it was a dragons. 

“You may touch me. If you like. But I will not hurt you, Jesse McCree. Not so long as I hold breath will I ever hurt you.” he says it and gets down slowly to his knees. His legs are not like Jesse's arm but they do help him. He had weak legs ever since his youth, the fake legs that sit over his true flesh keep them from breaking. Jesse avoids his eyes. 

“I...I don’t-” he stops himself. Hanzo understands. He knows how to be used but nothing else.

“I can teach you, if you like.” Hanzo offers instead. Jesse looks at him. 

“Like what?” 

Hanzo whispers, “Anything.” 

Jesse sits down cross legged from him, blushing still and looking away, “I...I’ve never been kissed proper before.” 

“Kissing is easy.” Hanzo says and crosses his legs as well. Jesse blushes. 

“How…” 

“Come closer.” Hanzo says, holding out his hand, and Jesse seems to shrink into himself, “The towel may stay on. Or I can get dressed.” 

Jesse shakes his head, “No.” and the towel comes off and he crawls into Hanzo lap and Hanzo has to stop himself from pinning Jesse down and taking him. The dragons want to claim him but Hanzo can’t. Not yet. Hanzo moves slowly and cups his rough and tan face between his hands and lowers it to his lips. Jesse opens his mouth and Hanzo keeps his kisses shallow and quick. 

He pulls back, “We have time. There is no rush.” 

“I...I don’t know anything about going slow.” 

“Let me teach you.” 

“Okay.” Jesse whispers. Hanzo helps him to learn to kiss slow. Chaste kisses and little to no tongue. Jesse moves his hips over Hanzos cock and he has to hold him still for he is only a man. Hanzo trails kisses down his face and along his jaw, licking and nipping and his throat. Jesse is a panting and moaning mess in his lap and Hanzo holds him still.

Hanzo goes no further than that. When Jesse comes on a choking moan all over them, Hanzo comes all over Jesse and now he smells like him. Hanzo can feel the dragon purr and coil in sexually possessive satisfaction. He knows once he mates Jesse proper, they will never stopping sounding at Jesse McCree. For now though, Jesse is dazed and panting and Hanzo helps him to his feet and to bed. Hanzo goes to get a rag to clean them off but Jesse stops him with a firm hand on his wrist. 

“It will crust.” Hanzo tells him. 

Jesse chuckles, “I know that all too well. But...I want it ta. It wasn’t left there because ya didn’t care. I want it and that means it’s...good.” 

Hanzo hums and kisses Jesse on the cheek as he curls tightly around him. Jesse is the little spoon. He whispers to Jesse, “When you wake, we will talk more and we will learn your boundaries.” 

“How long will you wait?” Jesse asks him sleepily. 

“Forever. I will wait for you forever Je-McCree.” 

“Thank you. And it’s Jesse.”


	5. Is this a dream?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hanzo is a weak man when it comes to Jesse McCree.

The dream is the same one he has had ever since meeting Jesse. But that is understandable. The dragon know him only as mate and mates do not stay chaste from each other. The dream is always in the pre-dawn hours and Jesse is always above him, riding him slow and steady. He pants and whines softly, as though he does not wish to draw attention to them. Hanzo wants him to scream. He wants the whole of the world to know that Jesse is  _ HIS,  _ and no one else may take or touch or use him.

Dragons DO. NOT. SHARE.  **_EVER._ ** He grabs at those hips and grinds Jesse down until he is sobbing as he rides Hanzo. Hanzo reaches up and grabs a handful of brown hair and yanks him down, kissing him rough and full of teeth and tongue. He has dragon features, all Shimada dragons do. 

Forked tongues, knots, scales, even turning into full on dragons. He makes his tongue longer and thinner, serpentine and slick. He moves his tongue all the way down, deep into Jesse and licks at the fluttering walls of his throat. Jesse grabs at the bed, eye wide and afraid and he jerks. Hanzo lets him, going slow in his licking. Jesse always takes a few moments to remember that he can breath and he does. He removes his mouth and takes shivering breaths and Hanzo slowly fucks his throat.

Jesse is a wreck as his eye roll back in his skull and his hips(he still holds them, even now, grip sure and strong, for dragon never let go during mating) almost jerk him off of Hanzo. He comes with a hoarse cry and Hanzo preens under the warm cum on his stomach and chest. He doesn’t stop fucking up into Jesse, who always go soft and agreeable after. Hanzo flips them in one smooth motion, his tongue sliding out and Jesse moans at the feeling. Hanzo grabs his hand and slams it down near his head to keep it there. He uses his other hands to lift his legs up over his shoulder and he drills into Jesse like a man possessed. He can feel his knot forming and so does Jesse who jerks and looks down. 

Hanzo kisses him deeply as he pushes in one last harsh time. His knots goes in and Jesse cries out in pain into his mouth. Hanzo doesn’t move and takes to kissing and nipping at his neck instead, scenting the thick chest hair now heavy with sweat. Jesse is muttering and crying and Hanzo licks his tears away. 

“Together,” Hanzo pants into his ear as he begins to move, “the dragon consumes us.” 

They stayed lock on his knot for about an hour and the sun has truly risen into dawn by the time Hanzo has pulled out. Jesse looks pregnant with the cum in his belly and it pools out of him so lewdly. Hanzo feels pride at this and always leans down to clean him, working his once more serpent like tongue inside of him. Jesse has come many times and now only gives little mewls of complaint as Hanzo cleans him as best he can. He stills looks pregnant and Hanzo wishes he could breed Jesse. The dragons would forever be sated if he could do that. He kisses his way back up to his mouth and sucks on his tongue. 

Jesse is covered in bites and red marks. Hanzo has even marked him as a mate, the bite over his heart line on his neck deep and scabbing over. Jesse is still crying and this part of the dream has changed, Jesse is always happy and sated at the end. Instead he sits up and stands and Hanzo is very confused. He turns and looks at him for a long moment, eyes bloodshot. 

“You’re just like the others, Shimada. I knew it was too good to be true.” 

Hanzo feels a shiver of fear. It wasn’t a dream. 

“Jesse-” he tries but he is already gone. Hanzo doesn’t know how he fucked up so badly. He thinks it over long before it even began but the next night Jesse is back and Hanzo is at a lost. He is sitting outside on the balcony, sake in hand and legs spread wide in the chair he sits upon. The knock comes and he calls for whomever to enter. The lock clicking makes him turn around and there is Jesse, in a loose robe and looking down at his feet as he comes toward Hanzo. Hanzo tries to stand but Jesse pushes him back down and then he sits in Hanzo's lap, knees on either side of his thighs. 

Hanzo set the sake down on the small table next to him and Jesse removes his robe. He is naked once more. Jesse hooks his arms around his neck and kisses him quick. A peck really. The dragon curl and twist inside of him. They know they have wronged Jesse, somehow(Hanzo knows how but the dragons do not), but are now confused as to why their mate is back to once more join in the act of sex. They can smell it. 

Hanzo is a weak man. 

“I want it.” Jesse says, still not looking at him. Hanzo feels like he is lying. He places his hands on those hips he had bruised. 

“We do not have to do anything you do not wish. This morning-”

“I started it.” Jesse cuts him off, “I started it ‘cause of how I am as a person. You’re just a man, Hanzo. I shoulda know better. But I do want this.” 

“Even after…?” 

Jesse blushes, “I could feel you, ya know. In my stomach. It felt like you were punching my guts each time.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“Don’t be. I liked it.” 

“Jesse.” 

Jesse kisses his cheek and whispers in his ear, “Do it again, Hanzo. Fuck me until I can’t remember my own name anymore. We have all night.” 

Hanzo closes his eyes as Jesse grinds down on him. He is a weak man. 


	6. The only difference between what you know and don't know is what you think you've mastered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fluff! And then ANGST.

Jesse had never had a relationship like the one he had with Hanzo. He had a relationship, sure, but Frank had been his abuser more than his lover. Hanzo...Hanzo was very different. Frank had always wanted his food cooked and ready to eat for him. His clothing washed and ironed. Weapons cleaned and left in the EXACT same spot every time. And sex was a chore. 

Frank never thanked him and often hit him or sold him out. When Gabriel Reyes, his former commander, found out when Frank finally invited him to a sex party where Jesse had been the main attraction. Gabriel had put a stop to that. And Frank went a mission that he never came back from. Gabriel gave him easy missions after that. He often told Jesse he was a good man too. Then everything started going south and Jesse had left. Hanzo was...the difference was too much. 

Jesse made him food and got ready for a smack since he had made an American breakfast than a Japanese one. Hanzo had eaten it all and kissed him before and after with  a smile on his face. Cleaning weapons and clothing had often gotten him a belittling comment. Hanzo thanked him and often asked if he needed help. Sex was very, VERY, different. Frank had used him and never let him reach his peak. Hanzo it seemed had made it his mission to not only make sure he reached it but that he reached it often.

He also like to talk. A lot. For a man who never said more than three dozen words during the day he was downright chatty in the bedroom. He also liked to shower Jesse in gifts and affection. The only thing that Hanzo and Frank seemed to have in common was being possessive. With Frank, Jesse had felt like an item. A toy that only he was allowed to use and let others abuse. 

Hanzo was possessive but it was more like Jesse was the one who called the shots. The knot was a scary neat trick but Hanzo was always so lovey dovey while they were stuck together. 

Like now. 

“Jesse. Jesse.  _ Jesse.”  _ Hanzo sighed as he nuzzled into the sweat damp hair of his temple. Jesse knew he smelled something awful. He had fallen into the damn English Channel on the mission and Hanzo had jumped him the moment he had gotten into the room. Hanzo didn’t seem to care though. 

“I’m right here, darling. I ain’t going anywhere.” Jesse told him and he got his legs hooked comfortable around the archers waist and let his body relax. Hanzo kissed him quickly before moving down to his throat. 

“I’d follow you anywhere. My sweet Jesse. Jesse. Jesse.” 

Jesse pet his hair as Hanzo worried the skin on his throat with little love bites, “I ain’t going nowhere. I’m here with ya, ain’t I?” 

Hanzo looked him in the eye and hugged him even closer, eyes glazed over and punch drunk on happy, “I almost lost you today. But you were saved. My little brother caught you for me. I can’t lose you, Jesse. I’d die without you.” 

“Nobody ever died just ‘cause their lover took a dirt nap.” he said. He knew it was a lie. Jack might not answer to his name anymore, but 76 had been born the moment Gabriel Reyes stopped breathing. Jack had loved Gabriel something mighty fierce. Like how the sun loved the moon. Or life and death.

Hell, death loved life so much it had kept everything life had even seen fit to give it. Hanzo gave a low whine and pressed their foreheads together and looked him dead in the eye. Hanzo didn’t have golden eyes. Well, he did, but he had brown eyes. Like Genji. Like him. Jesse just kept petting his hair as he whispered in their shared breathing space. 

“Dragons only mate once and they mate for life. Once their mate is gone...dragons are lackluster and weak. The fire dies in them. Their immortal lives are dull without their mate. I would die without you. I know that. Genji knows that about his mate too. If we lost you…” 

“You ain’t gonna lose me.” Jesse promised with a kiss. 

Looking back, he shouldn’t have made that promise. As the big bruiser of a Talon agent slams his boots down on his human hand he can feel the bone crack. The metal one is gone. Jesse is on his stomach in the hot sands of Egypt and he had been reaching for his gun. He can feel blood leaking out of his head and into his eyes. He glares up at the agent and spits on his shoes. The crack of his skull busting open is a nasty one. Jesse has a feeling things are going to get worse before they get better. 

*******

Hanzo does not cry out when they find out Jesse has been caught. He does not weep and mourn and howl like how he wants. He does not even look surprised. He holds his cowboys hat and gun close and marches to his brothers room. Genji and Zenyatta are waiting for him. As he climbs into bed between them and curls around the smelly and dusty hat, he finally weeps. Jesse is gone.

But they will get him back. Dead or alive, Hanzo will have his body to burn and mourn over or shower in love once more. Genji lies atop him, curling around his form and purring. Zenyatta floats above them as he sings his holy verses in a soft tone. Genji pets his hair for hours and Hanzo can not sleep. Genji nods off and Zenyatta powers down behind him on their small bed. Hanzo leaves in the middle of the night. 

He tucks the cowboy hat into his obi and leaves with arrows and bow. The dragons will be sated. Blood will be split. Come hell or high water, Jesse McCree is coming home with Hanzo Shimada. Or the world is going to burn.


	7. Si esto es une folie partagée par deux luego hace un fantasma faire un trio?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel liked to think he was born in December. Reaper doesn't know why he liked to think. He doesn't know why his heart hurts sometimes either. Gabriel thinks he knows. Amélie wishes she could say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is Spanish/French/Spanish/French. It translate into, "If this is a madness shared by two, does a ghost make it a threesome?" Google said anyway. This chapter has angst. Sad times ahead. Please be warned.

Gabriel Reyes had been born in December. Or so he liked to think since he often enjoyed the snow and ice and cold. But he can not say for certain. He had been born and he had been alone. He had been born and he had been alone and the nuns had given him the last name of Reyes, because they knew very little Spanish and they wanted to call him “little king” since he had come to them on the eve of Christmas. He is seven when the last nun dies and he is alone again. He is an angry and bitter child and he takes to the streets of the gang controlled lands of California. 

The whole west coast is controlled by different gangs. The American southwest is ruled by only two. The Deadlock Gang and The Navajo Thunderbirds. Gabriel isn’t stupid enough to stay and so he lies awake at night in fear and slinks like a beaten dog in the day. He eats when he can if he can. He makes it three hundred miles before the Route 66 marker, Deadlock territory, when a Navajo woman grabs him out of the trash and he tries to smack her, silent and bitter. She rolls her eyes and takes him home. 

He is bathed in water and given food and she keeps him close to her breast as they sleep. Gabriel Reyes stays with her until he is a teenager. She keeps him away from the gangs and he joins the army. She is never his mother. They share no common language. She only speaks Navajo and he only speaks English. He had tried to learn his mother tongue but it had never taken. 

Gabriel was lost to his own culture. Jack had been a welcome friend. They had been drunk as fuck and fucked as they drank and Gabriel told him the truth. Jack knew it. He would teach him, if he wanted. Gabriel clutched to his culture like a dying man to a cross. Then he was put in charge of his own unit. 

Then Jack became the leader and he was bitter. Jack had told him the reason why. They wanted a poster boy and Gabriel was too...dark. He had asked if they meant his skin or his temperament. Then he remembered that it didn’t matter, they had spoken. Jack lied and said his temperament but Gabriel knew the truth. Jack was blonde and blue and quick to say yes to a snapped command. 

Gabriel had never taken orders he knew were shit. They gave him Blackwatch and he clutched it to his heart just like his lost culture. Then he meet Genji and Genji was in tune with his culture. It was all he knew. And then he met Jesse. And Jesse was like the woman who had raised him but he knew Spanish. Gabriel hated him in that moment. 

He knew Spanish. He knew English. He knew  _ NAVAJO _ .  Jesse was not lost to his culture they had forced him out. Gabriel took him in then because he understood. He understood what it was like to be forced out of a thing you want so badly you would sell your soul for it. He saves Jesse from a man who had rubbed him wrong from day one.

Gabriel had taken great pleasure in watching him burn alive. Then the rift between him and Jack gets bigger. It's odd to think about it now but, Gabriel doesn’t remember the moment when they stopped being JackandGabe and started being Jack and Reyes. And then Morrison and Commander Reyes. It’s was like falling in love backwards. You don’t remember the exact moment when you fall in love with them, but you know that you did. Hate was the same thing he supposed. 

Jesse left and Genji died and then  _ they _ died. He had gone to see Jack, he had been planning on handing in his two weeks notice and he had wanted to try one last ditch effort to mend the bridge he had been unaware of that it was burning. He tackled Jack to the ground and took the brunt of the explosion. He died on top of him and Jack's bloody face was his last memory. Before he took a breath and was death again. He was alive again. He screamed after that first breath and he didn’t stop for a long time.

He supposed that being born had to have a common theme. A quick breath of air and then screaming at the sudden world you are in. He goes to Jack, his Jack, and mourns over his grave. He leaves him roses every year. Red and big and bright. Amélie comes with him once and she doesn’t say anything as she leaves a white rose next to his bouquet of red. They are no longer who they were and the dead can not haunt them. 

They allow them to, but the dead chose not to. Reaper and Widowmaker lived. Gabriel Reyes died saving Jack Morrison. Amélie Lacroix died when she was kidnapped and brainwashed. Her husband had been her first victim and no one had even known she was missing. Talon had killed them in different ways. It’s why as they come into the underground bunker in Germany, a large castle long since left to ruin after the war, he has to do a double take at the man they have in the glass cell. 

Jesse had grown up. He walks to the cell and comes to stand in front of him. Jesse is missing his metal arm, the flesh one if broken and sits at an odd angle. He nose bleeds and his breathing is jumpy. Broken ribs. One eye is swollen shut. They had shaved him. 

No more hair, no more beard. He looked too young again. Amélie comes to stand next to him, her heels loud in the silence. 

Jesse doesn’t even look at them when he asks Gabriel, in slurred Spanish, “Are you going to kill me?”

His tongue is heavy in his mouth and he doesn’t know how to answer him in Spanish. The gap between them has grown and he mourns the loss of the young man who understood. Amélie looks at him, sidelong and mouth twisted in a painted frown. She has been a puppet too long and she can no longer remember the dream of defying them. Leaving Talon. Being free. The puppet has too many strings and Widowmaker enjoys her job. 

Amélie had never been so cruel. But she was dead and Gabriel had never been a puppet. There were no strings on him. He turns sharply and she follows. She follows after him, the  _ clickclickclick _ of her heels loud in the metal basement. They speak in soft tones. They have learnt to speak in soft tones.

Only the dead are allowed to scream. 

“He will not last.” 

“He can.” 

Amélie shakes her head softly, her hair waving as she does, “They have already begun, Gabriel. He will be lucky to last the night.” 

“He lasted in the Deadlock Gang. He lasted in the Navajo Nation. He lasted Blackwatch. He can last, Amélie.” 

“Even the strong can die.” 

He stops at this. Jack had been strong. She watches him. They had once entertained the idea of leaving. Sneak out while the others slept, in the dead of the night. Sail off and start over. The rest of their lives to mourn their dead and put themselves back together.

He digs his metal claws into his palm. It doesn’t hurt. It can’t. The dead do not feel pain. He looks around and uses to shadows to see. They are alone. No one else.

He takes off his mask and Amélie blinks away her shock as she always does. Bone peaks through his left cheek. The right cheek is gone and the teeth(sharp and pointed and inhuman) glare out of his rotten flesh. His right eye is normal shaped, colored red and tired. His hair is greying at the temples but it fades into ink. The left side of his face is something from an H.P Lovecraft novel. Ten eyes, solid red and each one blinking individual. 

The long column of his throat was a fine map of the human muscles that made up the throat. The nanites crawled through his veins like insects and often bulged out, even once crawling across his human eye in a funeral march. Amélie had been a witness to that and she had been truly shocked. Now, it was nothing so shocking to her. She was used to it by now. He was used to it by now. 

“The strong don’t need to die.” 

“No,” she consented softly and crossed her arms, “they don’t. But the good die young. The strong die slow. And the wicked live a long, long time.” 

“Then what were we, Amélie?” 

She gives him a smile, her lips full and soft and sad under her long nose and she bows her swan like neck to mutter into her chest, “We were the unlucky few, Gabriel.” 

He reaches out to hold her hand and she lets him, “Jesse doesn’t have to join us.” 

“Why would he?” she chuckles sadly, not looking at him, her other hand crushed into a fist at her side, “Why would he want to be like we  _ happy  _ few? Happy people don’t  _ have _ a history. Don’t have  _ problems _ . Don’t even  _ exist _ .” 

“We used to. We had people who loved us. We had lives. We had futures. And then Talon brought it all down. Jesse,” he jerks his head back down the hall toward where they had left the glass cage, “Jesse doesn’t deserve what they plan on doing to him.” 

“None of us did.” she says thickly, biting back tears. Her eyes are glassy and they do not weep. They can’t anymore. 

He removes his hand and lifts her face to look at him, “Then help me.” 

She scoffs, eyes glassy and steps back, wiping the tears still unshed away harshly, “Who will help us?”

Before he can answer a shout makes them turn and step away from each other. An agent and Sombra, the doctor behind it all, come toward him. Sombra smiles her sick smile at them and looks at both of them before asking, softly, “What are you two doing?” 

Amélie looks away and Gabriel answers, “Talking about the mission.” 

“It was success,” Sombra says calmly, “what is there to talk about?” 

“None of your business.” Amélie snaps and Sombra chuckles. 

“Would you please,” she says clearly and evenly, tone paced and controlled, “save the date for me? We have a vision for the world.”

Something clicks in his head. He blinks slowly and looks around. Sombra asks him something. Gabriel doesn’t have an answer for her. Outside he can see snow. He likes to imagine that he was born in December. He blinks slowly and looks at Widowmaker. 

He scowls and slaps his mask back on before growling out, “What are  _ you  _ looking at, spider?” 

She scowls at him and turns on her heel and flips him off, “A stupid man who doesn’t even remember why he’s sad.” 


	8. Somewhere over the rainbow, a dragon wages war for his lost love.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry. Inspired by the podcast WITHIN THE WIRES, which is where a vast chunk of this is from.

Hanzo almost killed his brother a second time. This time it would have been an accident, but Zenyatta grabbed his arm before his knife could meet the faceplate of his brothers. Genji didn’t even flinch. Hanzo huffed and yanked his arm away, putting the knife away. He had heard himself being followed and had used his training to duck and weave. He understood how Genji kept up with him but not Zenyatta. Genji might have had the monk on his back. Genji folded his arms over his chest. Hanzo turned and looked over the edge of the roof. The Talon transport was coming around the corner. Good, he hadn’t lost it. Genji came to stand next to him and looked down as well. 

“If you die,” Genji said softly, “then who will save him?” 

“I do not plan on dying.” Hanzo said softly. Genji looked at him for a moment and then back down at the Talon transport. He kept his arms folded tightly and stance loose but ready. 

“No one plans on dying, Hanzo. It comes as a surprise for everyone.” 

Hanzo wants to snap at him that the sick and dying are not surprised to die. Their mother had not been surprised to die at all. The cancer had come and claimed her and she knew it long before the doctor told her about it. But Genji had taken her death harshly. It had lead him down the path of rebellion and he had left. Blackwatch had been a haven for him. Three years after, Hanzo killed him and Genji had not been surprised. Only hurt. Hanzo does not say anything about that. 

“The transport,” Zenyatta said, “is it a transport that will lead you to Jesse McCree?” 

“No.” Hanzo grits out between his clenched teeth, “But someone knows.” 

Genji gives a low hum, “The others would want to help.” 

“No, they will not. What we are doing carries too much weight. They will not risk it all for one man. They will not risk it for my mate. I will.” Hanzo says as his eyes track the transport as it lumbers up the small street. It has been moving slowly. They are trying to keep under the radar and still make their ETA to wherever they are headed. He turns his head to the right. A chokepoint. 

“Hanzo,” Genji sighs, as he removes his katana and gives it a few swings to let his arm get ready for the battle. Hanzo makes sure his bow is ready, “you must learn to trust others. Like Jesse.” 

“Jesse is a fool.” Hanzo says as the transport hits a pothole, “But my fool is coming home, come hell or high water.” 

They leapt off the roof and attacked. 

******************

Amélie can not make any  _ aggressive  _ moves against Talon, but she can still make moves. Moves that time and planning and it takes all of her training to do it. Jesse is beaten every day, but at night they hook him into a metal chair fashioned from a dentist nightmare and forced to listen to “relaxation” exercises to keep his mind sharp. Amélie knows better. Those tapes had been all she had known for two years and once they stopped all she knew was what they had told her. To change someone you didn’t  _ need  _ to hurt them. Just keep them awake for hours on end, give them little food and water and have someone speak softly to them. 

Jesse was like Gabriel though, stubborn. They had to hurt him because soft voices made them even more stubborn. She fixed the recordings once in awhile. Jesse had been in their company for almost four months and Overwatch had been jumpy ever since. The two Shimada heirs had not been seen nor the former member of the Shambali. Jesse was kept in the glass cell and Gabriel was kept busy. Amélie was not. 

She watched as they hooked him back into the chair and put the headphones into his ears. They had broken his toes today and had begun to make little cuts under all of his nails. Jesse looked so tired and beaten down. She hoped that he could still listen and understand her voice. Gabriel only has a vague memory of wanting to free Jesse, but she remembers it all. She can never leave but she will not be idle anymore either. Talon has hurt too many for too long. 

She knows it's too little, too late, but she to try. 

************

Jesse feels heavy, like his head is full of rocks. He knows a molar is missing, but the rest of his teeth might be cracked. Maybe. Everything hurts and these stupid tapes make him have a headache. But they tape him down so he can’t take the headphones out. He is ready for the same British lady to start talking in his ears but instead Amélie begins talking to him. He hadn’t heard her voice since Blackwatch. He wonders what fresh hell this is. 

Amélie speaks softly and slowly, like she’s hiding and trying not the get caught, “These cassettes will help to further understand how your body works from top down, mind to matter. My voice will guide you through these exercises. You will trust only my voice, and your body, to which you are servant. Listen. Remember. Comprehend. If you listen carefully to each recorded session, you may find information in these cassettes useful to you in your daily life.”

He spots her watching him from the other side of the glass, her face blank but her eyes. He blinks slowly at her. She is cold and dead but something,  _ someone,  _ in there is trying to help him. He can see beyond the ice wall, a person screaming to be let out. He mouths thank you at her and she blinks slow and her eyes stay closed for a whole six seconds. She doesn’t move away. She is watching him like a spider watches the world below and waits for her prey to come flying into her web. 

“The object is to listen, to remember, and to comprehend.” her voices goes on and he hears under her voice the slight echo, the three second delay between the echo and her words. A bathroom or metal closet? Something, she is being sneaky while she makes these, “Before you start the study, find a private spot, alone, away from security, far from disruptive sounds such as fire alarms and sirens. These cassettes are to be listened to free of external interference. Start with a breathing exercise. As you inhale through your nose, feel your breath behind your eyes.”

They are watching each other and he is breathing like she says to. She breaths the same way. Slow and steady. He can feel his heart slowing down from the dead run it has been in since he woke up here. Wherever here even is. He mouths to her,  _ where am I?  _ And she...she looks to the side, her head not moving, her eyes a slow slide to the left and Jesse knows. 

She can’t say. They’re watching her and him and these little audio hints are the best he can be given without getting her re-brainwashed. 

Amélie is still speaking to him, a voice from the past and the current her watching him as they try to brainwash him, “Feel the cool air flow below your forehead. Feel it hover under the top of your skull. Feel it slip down your neck, across your shoulders, and into your lungs. Breathe in now. Breathe out, slowly, through your mouth. Feel the air, now stale, now used, rush from your lungs. Feel your body relax as it lets go of the air, freeing it from the temporary prison of your ribs.”

Jesse feels like she is trying to give him a hint. Something they are going to do to him come the morning. He tries to turn his head to the left and he feels something tick. A woman is watching Amélie. She looks...he doesn’t know. His vision is getting fuzzy and he puts his head back and the pain in his neck is gone. His eyes stop betting fuzzy and he blinks away the grit in them. 

“Breathe in. Breathe out. Continue breathing, and listen. Envision the air as a liquid, just like the first time you swam. This was before you were born, when you were floating, unaware, fluid within and without your body. You breathed it just fine. You don’t remember any of this.” 

Amélie sounds...sad. Jesse wonders why and then it hits him. Amélie and her husband had been trying to have kids around the time he had been taken under Gabriel’s wing in Blackwatch. He wonders if something happened to her. He wouldn’t put it past Talon to do something as horrible as kill her unborn child and make it impossible for her to have anymore. He looks at her again and she moves away. He understands. 

“You shouldn’t remember any of this. Inhale the thick liquid through your nose, and out through your mouth. You don’t remember the loud thrum of another’s body, a mother’s body noisily soothing your unwitting transition into a conscious and sentient creature. You are again breathing liquid. Your lungs are milk-soaked yellow cake. Draw liquid in……and out. Feel it bubbling in your chest.”

This is a hint. What kind of hint? Jesse is too tired to think of what it is she is trying to tell him. He just wants to sleep. The chair will shock him if he does though. He hasn’t hit REM since the first week of his capture. He is so, so, tired. 

“Listen to the breaths. Who is that breathing right now? Is it you? Is it your own breathing you’re hearing? Are you certain? Imagine there is another. Someone standing just over your shoulder, breathing in……breathing out.”

He jerks awake and Gabriel is on the other side of the glass. He is watching him. Did Amélie plan this, he thinks in a panic and then, no. No. Maybe. He doesn’t know. He is so, so tired. 

He just wants to sleep. His heart is beating too fast. He follows her breathing and his heart slows. Gabriel becomes mist and smoke and suddenly he is  _ inside the cell with Jesse and he is armed.  _ Jesse keeps breathing. Gabriel leans over him. Jesse is trapped and he keep breathing because if he is going to die he will not die afraid. 

“A hand touches your right shoulder, pressing you down gently, as if to keep a balloon from lifting out of gravity. Breathe in……and out. Feel your shoulders rise and tense, and lower and relax. Feel them wax and wane, two helpless moons. Listen to the sound of the other breathing in unison with your own. You will learn to trust my voice.  _ You will learn to trust my voice _ .”

Gabriel is just watching him, hands braced on Jesse's arms. Jesse breathes. Gabriel doesn’t breath. He leans down, down, down, until his mouth is at Jesse's ear. He removes one of the headphones and now Jesse can only hear Amélie in one ear. Gabriel is not breathing, his chest doesn’t move. Jesse swears he can feel his breath though. 

Maybe it's a phantom feeling from back when he had been a scared kid and Gabe had held him as he cried. He had cried a lot after Frank and his mother's funeral. 

Gabe whispers in his ear, “Why do I know you?” 

Jesse closes his eyes tight and Gabe runs a finger under his bruised eye. Light and soft and fatherly. The headphone is replaced and Jesse is so tired. 

“Feel a breath from just behind you. You smell its caffeine acidity, its umami and metal musk through cotton lips. You know these breaths. How do you know them?  _ How do you know them _ ? The hand on your shoulder lifts away. You are alone.”

God he hopes so. He is tired. He wants to go home. But home is not real anymore. His mother is dead. His eldest sister is dead. His little sister fell off the map years ago and he doesn’t know where she is. 

He opens his eyes. 

He is alone. 

“You are fine. No one is with you. Who would be with you? You are probably alone. Continue breathing as you receive subliminal instructions embedded in this music. One more deep breath……and exhale. Are you in the same place you were before?”

“Say aloud the following: I am unbreakable; I am going to be free. Do not say this outloud.  _ They might hear you.  _ Can something be re-remembered? It cannot. Why are you here? What do you miss?” Amélie asks him. Jesse doesn’t remember that much. His brain just wants to sleep. 

_ “Who _ do you miss? Inhale……exhale. How did you feel? How do you feel now? Did you remember experiences you never had? People you do not know? Or maybe you do know them. Maybe you just forgot.” 

Hanzo. Jesse grits his teeth. Hanzo and Genji and all the rest. He is going to go home. He is. When they come in the morning, they begin water torture on him. Perfluorocarbon, they dunk him in a tank. He remembers what she told him. 

Breath. Just breath. They beat bloody for beating them at their own game. He smiles at her when they drag him limp back to his cell. She smirks at him. It’s a start. 

***********

Hanzo breaks the man's arms and jabs the arrowhead a little deeper into his collarbone. The man is crying and he pissed himself. Hanzo doesn’t care. He wants Jesse and someone knows where he is. The man is choking. Genji stands above them, a silver sentinel. Zenyatta prays behind them. 

“NUMBANI!” the man cries out, “THEY TOOK HIM TO NYUMBANI TO SEE DOCTOR SOMBRA FOR RE-EDUCATION!” 

Hanzo tears his throat out with his hands. He is blood covered, fresh and old, and the dragons are ready to burn the world down. 


	9. If death is a metaphor for love, then I don't want to know the metaphor for hate.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jesse can endure this. He has a lot of reason to hope for rescue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags have been added and changed. This is a longer chapter, so sorry about the wait. The Navajo name used if my brothers. Please enjoy and heed the tags for they are as up to date as this story is.

Gabriel catches her in the old Swiss base making a recording of some kind. She almost shoots him. Well, she does, but his head just grows back. She glares at him for a long moment before snapping at him, “What are you doing here,  _ Reaper?”  _

“The man in the glass cell,” he says softly, “I know him. Don’t I?” 

Her softens. As much as it can soften, “You do. You mentored him when you ran Blackwatch. Jesse McCree is his name. I’m trying to get him out.” 

“You’re brave.” he says after a moment, “How do you know I won’t say anything?” 

“What are we? Five?” she snaps. 

“Fair point.” he points to the recorder, “What are you doing?” 

She looks down at the recorder clenched in her hand, her eyes looking almost glassy in the pre-dawn light of December. Gabriel wonders why December is important to him. He feels like he should remember but he can’t. Like trying to catch the dust in light coming in from the window. She puts her rifle back on her back and sits on the crumbling front desk, the metal crying out under her weight. 

“I’m trying to help him. We can’t move against our oppressors, Gabriel. I’ve tried. God,  _ I’ve tried.”  _ her voice lowers and she bows her head, her hair falling onto her shoulder. She looks up after a moment, “They are trying to do to him what they did to me and you. The voices for me. The torture for you. He needs to leave this place before something horrible happens. We can’t let them make more of  _ us,  _ Gabriel.” 

He looks around the ruins of his old life. He scrapes off the gunpowder from the floor and the Overwatch logo shines out from under the dust and snow and ash. He crosses his arms as he looks down at the old logo that once dominated his life. He blinks slowly, “We need a better plan than this.” 

“You won’t remember anything we plan.” she says with a dejected tone and her shoulders seemed to slump. Gabriel wondered how often they had tried to get away and had failed. He moves to her and takes the recording from her. He turns the smooth metal in his hands and wonders how many years of his life he has lost. He wonders if he should feel angry and sad at this loss or a sick sense of relief at having no memory of the horrible things he had done. 

He gives it back to her and clenches his hand over the device and her own cool hands, “Then remind me. Don’t let me forget again.” 

Amélie just looks at him for a long time and then rolls her eyes, “The horrible shit I do for you would baffle the world, I swear.” 

*************

Jesse remembers the phantom pain of losing his arm. He can still feel it, even when the robotic limb is gone. He can feel his hard bones, the soft give of his old hands, the dragon scale feeling of the callouses that would have been there as he had gotten older and used his gun and flash bangs and lived a working mans life. He can feel the odd give of the skin that grows under the nails. He can still feel his arm even though he hasn’t felt it for so long. Today they have him sitting in a chair, his legs and one arm strapped down. The phantom arm is pulling at the leather keeping him chained. 

They also have him chained to the waist and across his chest. He is is some paper hospital gown. He doesn’t know if he is making his phantom limb try to free him or if some primal part of him is trying to escape. He think he has a concussion. It’s a little hard to remember. Sitting in a plush chair across from him is a doctor. They call her Sombra. 

Behind him is a man holding the EKG machine. They keeping shocking him a lot. They keep asking him questions he won’t answer. He just keeps humming at her and the man who shocks him. In his head he list off the names of the people he loves and is trying to protect. 

Lena Oxton. Tracer. He had never understood why that had been codename. Why not something to do with time? She was stuck in some loop of time. She was going to be a pretty twenty-something forever. Lena didn’t age anymore. 

She didn’t get sick anymore. She was now a constant point outside of time. The girl who jumped through time. Or was it exploded out of time? If she didn’t have her fancy chest piece then she would be gone. Or gone in a sense that she would no longer be bound by time and then exist in some some hidden wall between what was happening to her and what everyone else was having to deal with. He likes to imagine that she looks different in old age. 

Lena will never get old. She won’t get white or grey or silver hair. She won’t complain about the cold and how it hurts her bones. She won’t complain about kids younger than her, then again, Lena is too nice a person to do that anyway. He likes to think of her as that sweet old lady with a kick ass past. She can bake cookies and fire a gun with expert marksmanship. Knit a sweater and kill who with her pinky. 

He likes to think that finds someone nice to settle down with. That she has a bunch of kids and grandkids and maybe some great grandkids. He wonders if she would marry a man or a woman or one of those Omnics. He likes to think that she would be happy. He likes to think that the horrible accident that almost killed her never happened. But that isn’t fair to her. She would still be a hero. 

Time power or no, Lena Oxton has a strong sense of her boundaries for right and wrong. 

“Jesse,” Sombra says. He hates her voice. That stupid woman on the tapes already grates on the nerve. Amélie is better. Her voice is soft but firm. A woman who was tired of life. He was tired. But he might have a concussion and he knows he shouldn’t sleep if his head isn’t on right, “this will all be over when you tell me what I want to know. Tell me the names and locations of your friends.” 

Jesse shakes his head, letting it drop, chin resting on his collar bone, “No.” 

“Jesse.” 

“I said,  **_NO_ ** .” 

She snaps her fingers and then there is pain. 

Hana Song. That girl. Silly girl. Sweet girl. She misses her family and send them letters, honest to God paper and pen letters. He knows that pain. One day she will know the pain of losing them too.

He doesn’t understand half of what she says when she talks about her games. Or her music. He knows about being a teenager though. Eating junk food and drinking bad drinks. She’s a kid. Not a  _ kid,  _ but she’s...she’s his kid. In a way she is the baby of their little family and he wonders if anyone else has been the one to catch her when she nukes the enemy and she doesn her little backflip out of her meka.

She almost gave him a heart attack she when back flipped out at twenty feet as it took off in the sky. She had grabbed onto a light pole doubling as a street sign. She had broken her wrist. She had fallen and landed in Zenyatta's lap. She had been so happy to get a “team kill” and that she had schooled those “noobs” like a boss. He had just been happy she had been ok. She was a good girl. 

She was a diva and she knew it, but she was still a team player. 

Sombra sighs, “Jesse this will all be over if you tell me what I want to know.” 

“I think...I think I lost my hat.” 

Pain comes again. When it stops the whole world is spinning like a top. He can feel his head slouch and bob as he tries to make it look. Through his blurry eyes he sees-he sees-no. That can’t be right. He can’t be here. And yet there he is, in the corner of the room, a ghost watching it all happen.

Jesse wants to weep. He hasn’t seen him in so long. He looks away. If they see him they might do something horrible to him. So instead he looks at Sombra again even though it hurts and tries to remember the reasons why he  _ can’t and won’t  _ say anything. There are so many. He doesn’t remember if there had ever been this many reason before. 

Jack Morrison. That bitter old man. If he and Gabe had just talked about everything that was going wrong then maybe things would have been different. Jesse wishes he had stayed, some days. Others, other days he’s glad that he left. There was too much red tape and lies and shady back deals that no one knew about. The whole left and right hand not knowing what the other was doing had always sounded good in theory but in practice it was a shit show. Maybe Jack and Gabe were always going to be a sad love story. 

But they didn’t have to be. Jesse likes to imagine that maybe they get a happy end. A small house in the middle of nowhere with only a few visitors. A place to rest and finally,  _ finally,  _ be happy. Jesse knows that old dogs of war don’t often get happy endings. The nightmares come and the ghost haunt you forever. His mother used to tell him that ghost don’t seek revenge, they seek answers. 

But the living and the dead don’t speak the same language. Jesse glances at the ghost in the corner. He has to leave or they’ll find him. He looks back at Sombra. Jack would be laughing at her right now, for trying to break him. Jesse wishes he could laugh. He’s so tired though. 

Sombra it seems, has had enough. She gets up from her chair and slaps him hard enough that he think he blacks out for a second, “Jesse, tell me.” 

His head is pounding but he hears the ghost ask him something. Jesse was taught not to be rude and answer questions if he can even if he is having a hard time seeing who even asked him that question. So he does, he mumbles and blood drips from his mouth, “I don’t know where you are.” 

Genji Shimada. Genji. He remembers that kid is another reason. He was so...well, he was a teenage playboy when Jesse first met him. Genji would always bitch and moan about his brother. Gabe had one time looked at him and told him that if he said one more thing about Japan and his family he would ship him back in an extra small crate with his mouth sewn shut. Jesse had almost pissed himself from the offended look Genji had thrown him. 

Genji had the best faces. Jesse could never get his face to twist and turn like that. Lord knows he tried. Genji was more mature now. He thinks that might have something to do with almost dying though. Death has a way of making you shape up quick. Jesse wonders why that is. 

Sombra is shaking him and asking him questions in rapid fire. Geni liked to do that too, before he left to fight his brother. The ghost in the room reminds him to breath. Jesse does. 

“I want to know, now.” 

“You’ll have to come and find me.” he tells the ghost. The ghost is looking for him. Jesse wonders why that is. Maybe he owes this ghost an answer? He has killed a lot of people. 

Who is he missing? His list of reason isn’t short. He has to strain to remember but it comes to him. Fareeha Amari. How that woman could fly so well was a mystery to him. She’d been angry as a nest of hornets when her ma came back. Then again, her ma had been a hero. 

Fareeha had wanted to be like her ma so badly. Jesse remembers wanting to be like his mother. She had been the devil in a sundress and the king of nightmares. The Navajo Thunderbirds had been a force of nature when she barked orders at them. Then she fell in love and she took off her crown. Jesse had never been allowed to join her old gang. They said he was “too white” and “too stupid” to join. 

His mother had told him that she was proud of him anyway. He had joined Deadlock and then she had passed. Jesse wishes he could go back and tell her she had been right about a lot of things. Fareeha had been young when her ma died and had only ever known the stories. The woman wasn’t the myth. Fareeha was still coming to terms with that. All of their interactions thus far had been short and clipped colored with clenched teeth and hissed respect.

Jesse thinks he understands. Like when he sees Gabe. The man who was like his father and now the demon walks around in his skin. Jesse likes to think he understands. Sombra is shaking him and then pulling him from the chair. He falls to the floor and cracks his head on the tile. He wonders if too much head damage can kill him. 

He feels like he should know the answer to this. The ghost is on the floor, slapping the space near his head and screaming. He looks up at Sombra as she glares down at him. The ghost is trying to push at his shoulders to stand and fight. He is too tired. 

“Tell me.” she says coldly. 

“I think I hurt my head.” he informs her. 

Ana Amari had died on a mission. Ana Amari had died a hero. Ana Amari still looked good for a woman her age. Her, Jack and Reinhardt liked to sit and drink in the early hours of the morning and just talk about the good old days and Gabriel. Jack always talked about him like how those old love poems went. Rose colored glasses and all that. Ana seemed to understand. 

Then again, Ana was more aware of what Talon was known to do than anyone else. She had been dead and ghost are hard to kill. What better way to fuck up the people who were trying to kill the world then having them chase a ghost? Ana was a good sniper. She had been the best. No one in the old Overwatch could beat her kill score in the range. Now she was older and her kill score was good but no longer legendary. 

She was content in the fact that she was alive and well, that her daughter had grown up a hero and an icon to their people as a symbol of justice. All Ana had ever wanted was for her daughter to be ok. Jesse likes to think that everyone who has ever loved someone else feels that way. The logic of, beat  _ me _ , hurt  _ me _ , kill  _ me _ , but for the love of God  _ don’t touch them _ . Because if anything happened to the person or people you loved, it might feel awful. Mighty awful. Jesse rolls onto his back and Sombra stabs her heel into his stomach. 

He wheezes as she grinds it down. His one good arm grabs weakly at her ankle. The phantom limb is trying to stab her.

She puts her weight on him and says softly, “Tell. Me. Jesse McCree.” 

That isn’t his name. Not the name his mother gave him anyway. McCree had been the man who broke her heart when he died. Jesse had been the name she had to give him at the hospital. His name had been Yas. It meant snow. She had named him snow because his father had loved snow and she missed him something fierce when he died. 

Or left. Jesse didn’t know, truth be told. Her story changed each time he had ever asked. He glared up at her and said, “That ain’t my name.” 

Jamison Fawkes. That crazy little terrorist, also known as Junkrat, was another reason. Sombra stomped down on his stomach again and the ghost reached out to pet his hair. Jesses looked at the face. He blinked. Well, gut him like a fish and leave him for the wolves. He must have a concussion to see him here. He knew this ghost. He felt a laugh starting to bubble out of him but Sombra stomped it back down with her foot. 

“Tell.  _ ME _ . Now. McCree.” she snapped. 

“That  _ ain’t  _ my name.” he snapped back. 

He had more reason. He had more! He had to remember them all cause if he forgot even one then this bitch and Talon would win. And he would be damn before he gave them that satisfaction. Mei-Ling Zhou. She liked snow and ice and was too polite. She and Junkrat were always snapping at each other. Jesse pushed Sombra off of him. She almost fell but was caught by her guards. She snapped her fingers and they lifted him to his feet roughly. She got in close and hisses on his face.

“You think this hurts? You have no idea what pain I can make you feel.” 

He only smirked at her, the smirk he gave when he was flirting and said softly, “Well bless your sweet little heart, darlin’. I ain’t afeared of ya.” 

She punched him with all her might. His head snapped to the side. The ghost was there, a look of panic and terror mixing in a sick twist as he tried to keep his eyes open. Another reason. He needed another reason. Think. Think Jesse, think! 

There it was. A name and a face. Torbjörn Lindholm. That dwarf was almost as sour as Jack was. Then again, Jesse wouldn’t have him any other way. 

She forced him to look at her and her voice was now a snappish growl instead of the soft calm it had been for so many days, “Don’t you want to go home? I can make that happen if you  _ tell me what I want to know!”  _

“I don’t...I don’t know what I want.” Jesse admits. 

Amélie Lacroix. She was in there, somewhere. He had to help her get free. He had to. Because she was risking her life to help him and she didn’t didn’t owe him  _ anything.  _ The ghost was screaming and raging and only he could it. He was grateful for that. 

“Speak  _ hijo de puta!”  _ she yells as she pushes his face away. 

“Fuck you.” he sighs. 

Mako Rutledge. Roadhog. With no Roadhog, Junkrat would run amok. Well. More than usual. He was another reason for Jesse to hold out. 

“I know your past, Jesse.” she says as she takes another seat and gives him a cruel smirk. Jesse has a feeling he knows where this going. He should feel scared. He doesn’t feel anything anymore. He has to be brave though. He wants to tell him to look away. He doubts he would though. So instead he gathers his false courage and spits out at her instead. 

“That ain’t my name and you don’ know  _ shit  _ abo’t me.” he hopes he sounded braver than he felt. He hopes that his lovely ghost knows that he is ready for what she is planning to do. Jesse is no longer afraid of this pain, He has been on its hit list too often. 

Winston. Another reason. The big lug. Too good for the world. Too nice. Jesse hopes he’s doing fine. He hopes for a lot of things right now. 

Sombra scoffs, “Gabriel knew you. I know Gabriel.” 

Jesse chuckles, “No...no you really don’t. Only one man knew Gabriel.” 

Aleksandra "Zarya" Zaryanova. Keep listing them.

Reinhardt Wilhelm. Don’t forget anyone. 

Lúcio Correia dos Santos. Jesse has to keep them safe. 

Angela Zieglar. Mercy won’t be able to bring him back this time. He finds a strange sense of peace with that thought. 

Satya Vaswani. Don’t forgot anyone. 

Zenyatta Tekhartha. He would take care of Genji and...and...he feels like he is forgetting someone but he knows he isn’t. 

Gabriel Reyes. Only one more name. Who is it? 

Hanzo Shimada. 

Oh. 

“Hanzo.” he sighs and the ghost is Hanzo. How he found Jesse he has no idea. Sombra snaps something at the men and they leer at him. He mouths at Hanzo to look away. Hanzo doesn’t. His face is cold and cruel and there is hell in his eyes. 

“Last chance.” Sombra warns.  

Jesse laughs and laughs and laughs as he is bent over the table and the man sets up behind him. Jesse can feel his heat and he is not afraid. He looks right at Sombra and points at her with his phantom hand and she can’t see it, “He’s gonna kill ya,  _ darlin’.  _ He’s gonna kill ya and send ya back to whatever hole in hell you crawled out of.” 

She sneers at him, “And you’ll be right there with me.” 

“Then I’ll see you in hell,” he says and the man rams home. Jesse closes his eyes. 

***********

Genji has only see his brother like this once. Their mother had passed. He is a great beast of terror and power and he is weeping as he makes the sky above them tremble with lighting and thunder. Zenyatta apologizes for this. He had only wanted to help Hanzo reach a sense of peace, if only for a moment. Genji knows this. But dragons can see through the veil of life and to their mate. Whatever Hanzo saw has sealed the fate of those who have Jesse McCree. 


	10. Honey if you think the past is done then bless your sweet little heart.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Freedom is a right but not a God given one it seemed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have many regrets. This is not one of them. PLEASE HEED THE TAGS FOR THEY ARE UP TO DATE AS OF THIS CHAPTER. IF ANYTHING MAKES YOU UNCOMFORTABLE THEN GO AHEAD A SKIP.

Lucio liked to think that he was an OK dude. Chill and preppy and a freedom fighter. People should be free to live how they wanted. Which is why when the Shimada bros and robot Buddha go after McCree, he gets it. He  _ gets  _ it, ‘cause you anything for the people who love. While they have been causing terror to Talon following after the cowboy, the rest of the crew has been stopping payloads and playing king of the hill all over the world. Lucio gets along well enough with everyone. 

76 is a grumpy, salty old man, but he doesn’t get mad or even  _ upset  _ at the news that both Shimada's and the monk jumped ship after their teammate. So they fact that he is on this payload escort mission doesn’t surprise Lucio at all. After all, he is a healer, not a bare knuckle, drag it out and down fighter. He has found words to be more powerful than a fist to the face. But sometimes a fist to the face helped make your point. Or kept you alive at gunpoint. But he’s getting off track. 

Ana is the sniper of the group today, since Hanzo and Zenyatta are both “MIA” while they look for Jesse. Mercy has the revive tech so she got put on the team too. Zarya is keeping her gun running. A low hum of dangerous energy. The only person he isn’t happy about being here with is  _ her.  _ Satya Vaswani, the heir and owner of the Viskar Corporation. Lucio liked everyone well enough but he and Satya had too many fundamental differences. 

She had grown up in India, the only child to a wealthy, high ranking family in thecaste system. A woman who looked at logic and numbers. It was the reason the teleport tech was so damn good. She had worked her whole life to make sure it was perfect. But it seemed that was all she looked for. Lucio was much different. He had a loving, large family in the slums of Brazil and he worked hard to become a world famous DJ that spoke to people. 

He wanted to know  _ people  _ not  _ numbers.  _ Which is why he and Satya do not get along. Even as she saw him when she got on the plane she scowled and then scoffed before taking her seat and crossing her legs. Sadly, the flight from Gibraltar to Eichenwald was a seven hour flight. For the most part they ignored each other. But that all changed as she took a phone call from her work at her company. At that point he couldn’t hold it in anymore. 

“You have, like,  _ no  _ human feelings at all do you?” he snapped as he jiggled his legs, pushing his headphones down to hang around his neck. She turned her head to look at him one perfect eyebrow raised. She smirked at him and then gave a very nasty chuckle as she flipped her hair over her shoulder and looked away from him. 

“Know your place.” 

This just rubbed him the wrong way. God he  _ hated _ people like her. Viskar people in general, they had no idea what kind of demon they worked for. He was glad that the belt was holding him in place or he would reach across 76 to hit her. He had been raised to never hit a girl but he was very much tempted to do so at this moment. He crossed his arms and let a glare settle on his face, “I know my place. Unlike you who thinks there so much better than everyone else.” 

She smiled at him and spoke in a sweet voice, “I  _ am _ better than everyone else.” then she examined her nails before continuing, “To think I would have to work with a street ruffian.” 

“Yeah,” he said, letting his sour mood color his words, “I’m not to excited about this arrangement, either, Satya.” 

She snapped her head so quickly to glare at him, he thought she might have gotten whiplash, “That’s Miss Vaswani to you,  _ boy.”  _

Ana and Mercy, who were sitting next to each other, exchanged looks before Mercy tried to cut in, “Come now, there is no reason to-”

Lucio doesn’t want to hear it. He’s heard it his whole life and he’s done with it. He snaps his finger at her and says in an accusing tone, “What you  _ Vishkar _ would never understand is that people should be  _ free _ .”

She sneered at him, “The true enemy of humanity is disorder. What you call freedom is an illusion that causes more harm than good.” 

“You sound like those old audio files of the God A.I’s.” he snaps and comes to regret it as everyone looks at him in shock. Even through the visor, 76 looks ready to smack him. He ducks his head and then Satya laughs at him. A full on laugh and he shoots her a glare. She shakes her head and looks at him like you would look at an interesting bug. He hates it. 

“The God Programs,” she says as she wipes a tear from her eye, “saw the whole of humanity as a parasite that needed to be purged from the earth. While I enjoy perfection, I know that some people are very useful. But many are not. I do not know it I should be insulted or complimented by your statement, boy.” 

“What do you know about them?” he snaps. 

It’s 76 who answers, “They were hell bent on killing everything  _ not  _ machine. Well...most of them anyway.” 

“Most?” Zarya pipes up, “It was my understanding that, how you say? They wanted to Skynet the world?” 

Lucio remembers that old movie, “Yeah. No humans. Why would you say most?” 

“Idiot.” Satya sighs. 

“Like you know!” Lucio yells at her 

“I do.” she says with a pretty yawn. Lucio can feel his blood pressure rising. 

“During the war,” Ana says, “There were many God Programs, but not all of them went rogue. Many willingly shut down when asked.” 

“Except seven of them. I believe.” Mercy added. 

“Anubis was a late bloomer,” Ana says with a smile, “But my little pharaoh took care of it.”

Mercy smiles, “Fareeha was so proud. She had killed a God Program.” her smile fell, “Or so she thought.” 

“She only sealed it away.” Ana went on and then rubbed at her temple, “Other than him there was...oh, I can’t remember.” 

“Odin, Anubis, Zeus, Horus, Shiva, Tsu Kahlua and Buddha.” 76 says softly. 

“Out of all of them, only Buddha was smart.” Satya chuckles, “By making two copies of its main personalities.” 

“Lies.” Zarya says as she leans forward in her chair. 

Ana shakes her head, “No. Satya is right. Buddha was not, by any means, a violent God Program, but it was afraid to die. So it made two copies. Weaker and much easier to kill. One of which  _ was  _ recently killed.” 

“Oh?” Zarya asks. 

“Mondatta.” 76 said. 

Lucio almost forgot to breath, “N-no way.” 

Satya nods, “He and Zenyatta were the copies. But they have none of the abilities the God Programs had. A peace offering from Buddha before it was terminated.” 

“And Unknown. That was the other God Program.” Mercy says softly. 

“Gabriel,” Ana says and 76 flinches at the name, why Lucio doesn’t know, “was on the trail for a long time. But it ran cold after a three years. He kept looking, even while he ran Blackwatch, but it just vanished off the face of the world.” 

Gabriel Reyes. Lucio had heard stories about him. Satya only tilts her head, “As I understand it, Unknown was what was known as an Alpha God Program. The last and only.” 

“That was mostly rumor.” Mercy says, “But they were well founded rumors.” 

“I have not heard these rumors.” Zarya says. Lucio nods his head. 

“It was rumored,” 76 said as he crossed his arms, “that Unknown could infect the nanites inside of peoples advanced limbs and make them go haywire.” 

Zarya looks sick as she shakes her head, “No. Liars! No God Program had such power.” 

“Unkown was made off the books.” Mercy whispers as she clasps her hands together and looks down at her lap, “A black site and permitted, unethical science. By the time any of this information was known, the God Programs had already begun to run rampant and we had little time to think of a way to stop an unregistered, highly unstable A.I. Gabriel tried, but he was unable to find it.” 

“He got close a few times.” 76 tells them, “He had several reports about it. Unknown was a little smarter than the others though. It made hundreds of copies. He had thought he had killed it a few times but upon inspection it was seen that it wasn’t the original.” 

“That one science report made me hate our medical team.” Ana scoffs. 

Lucio itches along his scalp, “Medical report?” 

“About God Program like nanomachines inside of people.” Mercy answers him, “A way to keep the body stuck in a type of limbo. You’re not dead but you are, by no means, alive either.” 

Satya shakes her head, “Fools.” 

“Like you care.” Lucio says with a sullen expression. 

“I do.” Satya says, “Because if that report was even presented then it brings up a lot of questions. If these machines are  _ in  _ the body but not the brain, how would that individual feel or even think? Would they even remember who they are? What they’ve done? How sick would they be?” 

“On top of that,” Mercy says as she smooths her dress, “if they placed these machines into the brain stem instead, then what would happen to that person? Would they even be human anymore? Could they control Omics like the old God Programs could?” 

Ana shudders, “Sombra was a sick woman. It might be wrong to say but I’m glad she died at the Swiss base.” 

76 looks at her, “Sombra was there? I thought she had gone to Gibraltar the day before?” 

Ana and Mercy both looked confused and look at each other before looking back at 76. Mercy explained to him, “No. She stayed behind from the rest of her team. Something about an experiment she wanted to see finished before she left. Her body was never fully recovered since it had been in the basement and only a few limbs could be found.” 

Lucio can see it, through the visor. 76 thinks something doesn’t feel right. Lucio agrees. 

*****************

Sombra makes a clean cut and peels back the tender skin and moves the muscles out of her way. The brain stem pulses in time with his heart beat. She gently takes the little chip from the tray and places it onto the brain stem, just below the hippocampus. Jesse keeps making tiny sounds of pain and Sombra ignores them as she uses the small torch to bind them together. The chip blinks into life and she watches as little silver wires, they look like silverfish, move across the thick, pink goo and into his brain. Jesse jerks and jerks and jerks and he is crying. She rubs his back and watches as the wires begin to cord together and then dive into his spinal cord. 

She turns to the x ray monitor. She is fascinated as the wires move like water through his whole skeletal system and begins to weave into his muscles. She smiles and removes her medical mask. She leans down until she can whisper into his ear, “You’ll be a better asset than Gabriel  _ ever  _ was, Jesse. Now we just have to finish making you  _ perfect.” _


	11. If redemption is as wide and deep as the ocean then there has to be a city of sinners at the bottom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel and Jack finally talk after so many years of NOT doing that thing people should do when things go wrong. Hanzo might be losing his mind. Zenyatta needs to reign in his desire to kill the woman who killed his brother. Honestly, things could be going better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would say sorry but I feel like if I say it anymore you guys might think I'm lying to you.

Hanzo is a light sleeper and with Jesse missing he has been a fitful sleeper as well. Genji knows his brother well enough to see how the lack of sleep has begun to wear on him. Zenyatta has taken to flanking his brother to watch his back while Genji flanks the enemy to box them in. Hanzo has not used his bow or arrows. Hanzo has begun to use the knife that had, as he found out, been used to cut his own hair in shame after his “death” so many years ago. The blood lust is tampering out into something worse as the days drag on and on. Genji fears his brother might truly take the jump off the deep end and embrace the dragon fire in his heart.

Their father had died trying to become a _mononoke,_ Genji doubts that Hanzo will follow his fate. No, Genji worries that Hanzo will _succeed_ where their father failed. So he tricks his brother. Zenyatta has, more than once, entered sleep mode while in meditation. Hanzo is easy to lure into the pose, his mind is trying to find peace. Once his eyes are closed Genji lets his robotic body begin to hum. Soft and subtle.

Their mother had often hummed this while she worked. It had been an easy trick to get them to sleep. Genji is grateful that the trick still works. His brother slumps like a dead man and Genji lies him down to rest. Zenyatta is meditating on the patio outside the destroyed him. Eichenwald was a ghost city, a by product of the war that had never seen a happy end. Genji knows that Eichenwald had prioritized the children first when it was first evacuated, and thus no children had ever been labeled as casualties in this city.

But the loss was high. The war almost destroyed everyone.

Zenyatta knows his moods well enough and speaks softly from his position in the late day sun, “Your soul is uneasy, Genji.”

“I fear for my brother. Should he become full _mononoke_ there will be very little to stop him. I can no longer...I can no longer take my dragon shape, master. Should Hanzo let go of all his humanity…”

“I doubt that,” Zenyatta says, “since the last true shed of his humanity is still alive.”

Genji lets his face plate lift up and he looks at his master with a quizzical face, “I do not follow.”

“Jesse McCree is alive, Genji. So long as he draws breath your brother can not let go of his humanity.”  Zenyatta explains without having to turn around to look at his student.

“I have my doubts.”

Zenyatta looks over his shoulder, “Humans are made of love, Genji. Love binds you and keeps you more tightly than any chain in the world. Humans do it so easily that you don’t even see the chains around your bodies. To Omnics...this was such a wonderful thing. Love is so simple and pure and yet somehow it becomes complex when humans do it.”

Genji looks down at his brother and unties his hair to let his scalp ease and relax. He keeps up the humming. The world is silent, the birds chirp and whistle and sing, the wind plays through the ghost city. The world moves on and around and in this place of sorrow. There are many places of sorrow. As the twilight comes Genji lets himself lie next to his brother, holding his hand and letting himself follow him into slumber. Zenyatta waits until both of them are snoring and breathing deeply to gently hover down to the street and then lets his feet touch the ground to walk off the meeting point he had been told about in the early afternoon.

Genji and Hanzo had been arguing with each other when the quick flashes of light caught his attention. A meeting and plea for help. They knew where Jesse was. He is expecting a lot of things. An ambush or a set up. Even a trap. But none of these things happen.

The woman is blue, as though she has little blood running in her veins and she feels...familiar to him. Eerily so, but he makes no comment on it and she inclines her head at him.

“I was expecting an ambush.” he admits.

She nods her head slowly, “If it had been Talon calling this meeting then you would be correct. But I am nothing more than a puppet to them and I am tired of my strings.”

Zenyatta can understand that. He has found that while humans enjoy the concept of freedom and condemn that concept of owning others, the world is not so black and white. Some find comfort in the chains they place on themselves. Omnics had found their chains a comfort until the God Programs had come to turn them away. The world is not so black and white. This woman looks strained in ways that others might see as cold. Her body is tense and yet he knows he poses no true threat to her.

The sniper rifle on her back could pierce his hard shell without much effort. It dawns on him that this could be the sniper who had killed his brother, Mondatta. For a moment he feels rage. Then he stops himself. Talon does not have employees, very few are with them by choice. This woman claims to be a puppet. She might not have had much choice in her actions.

He thinks he can understand that. He floats all the way down to the ground and the woman gets down on one knee. He waits for a long moment and lets his hands rest on his knees before speaking.

“You claim you wish to help us. I have no reason to trust you, but I also know that his trail grows colder every passing hour and I fear my team mate may do something drastic soon. So...please, give me a show of good faith.”

She reaches slowly into her pocket, and pulls a phone from it, opening the touch screen to a paused video. She taps play and she hold it towards him so he can see. Had he lungs they would have seized as they look at the man who was once Jesse McCree. Gone is the sun kissed skin of a healthy man. Gone is his robotic arm. His hair and healthy weight are gone as well, replaced by limp, dirty strands trying desperately to grow back long and strong once again. His body is pale in pallor and the bones show through his skin. His eyes are bloodshot and red, rimmed in purple so dark that it is _black_ and Zenyatta knows he does not sleep.

He looks right at the camera and his voice is cracking and dry and so tired as he speaks, “This is Jesse McCree. I am of semi sound mind and body. You ain’t got no reason to trust Miss Amélie, but I do. She and Gabe have been helping me best they can. So _please_ listen to her. She has a plan and she’s on our side as much as she can be.” he takes a long shuddering breath.

Amélie in the video whispers, “Are you alright?”

Jesse blinks away tears, “They might _kill_ him. They can’t kill _him_ , Amélie. I’d never forgive myself is _anything_ happened to Hanzo and the others.”

She makes soothing noises at Jesse and her hands come into view to push back his hair and hold his bruised face tenderly in her palm, “Hush now. I will do what I can. Rest as best you can. I will return soon.”

The video ends and Zenyatta looks at her. Her eyes are misty and he reaches up and out slowly to run his thumb under eye, forcing the tears to run down. She doesn’t even twitch as the wetness leaves misery its wake. He holds her face in one hand and then takes the phone and video from her. She allows it and then places her own hand over his. She snaps her eyes shut and her other hand curls into a fist before being placed over her heart.

“I have... a confession.”

“I am no priest.” he says. Shambali monks did not believe in having one's sins constantly thrown back into the face of those who mourn for their mistakes. Confession was a way to judge others instead of making yourself feel better. Mondatta had never wanted to know what someone had done before coming to their order, only that they wanted to changed themselves and never again commit the sins which had brought them so low. He had once said it plainly once at a world peace conference. Enlightenment was not achieved by making others think and feel like you, but making them think and feel like the best possible version of yourself.

“You are a Shamballi monk. The heir of Mondatta.” she whispers and the tears run faster.

Zenyatta had hated that word. Mondatta had been his brother and friend. A teacher that had wanted everyone to be safe and loved in the aftermath of so much death. He shakes his head, “He was my brother. And my friend.”

“I...I killed him. And so many others.” she chokes out and falls to her knees in tears and holds his hand on her face closer, trying to muffle her sobs with the other, “My _programming_ is breaking down. But if they _finish_ what they have planned for Jesse, it won’t matter at all.”

This catches his attention, “What are they doing to him?”

“What _haven’t_ they done is the better question.”

“Amélie,” he says softly and brings her head gently up to look at him, “what has happened to him? Please, _tell me_.”

She breaks. The cold mask she has worn for who knows how long breaks and falls and crumbles in before his eyes and she sobs out in choking breaths and hiccups, “They put a _God_ Program into his brain.”

Zenyatta does not have blood, but he feels himself chill all the same.

*******

The outskirts of the city are mostly covered in nature and the once proud standing towers are now covered in wild roses and daisies. Jack is leaning on the jet, watching the fading sun play between the tops of the trees. His gun is held in his hand still, lose but firm. His other hand plays with the dog tags around his neck. One set is his and the other had belonged to Gabriel. All that was left of him. Jack didn’t even have a body to mourn over, the grave is empty.

He closes his eyes and lets his last fond memory of them play behind his old and scarred eyelids. He is mostly blind. According to Angela, he has lost 76% of his eyesight. The explosion had almost killed him but the damage from the fire and rubble flying had made him legally blind. The memory is the same one, each time. Jack wakes up first, and Gabe is there, sleeping with one arm over his head and the other holding Jack close. Jack has his head nestled in his neck and chest.

Jack has a hold of his dog tags and Gabe's curly black hair makes his look young. His beard his soft as Jack reaches up, letting out of the tags, to pets his face. Gabe doesn’t stir as Jack traces the scars on his face with the tips of his fingers. Under the blankets they are naked and the body heat of each other keeps out the cold in the room caused by the rain outside. Jack kisses his lower jaw and holds his cheek in his hand. Gabe opens his eyes and blinks a few times before turning his face to kiss Jack on the forehead. Jack closes his eyes and smiles as Gabe kisses him and then trails his mouth to catch his own in a kiss.

Gabe pulls Jack on top of him and Jack settles between his strong thighs and rubs Gabe's chest. They hadn’t left the bed. Jack had pulled moans and sweet whispers from Gabe that day. A week later Jack had been given the title of Strike Commander. Everything went downhill from there. A sounds catches his ears and he snaps into a fighting stance. He is on watch duty for the first shift in the night, as the others slept off the jet lag.

His SEP programmed body did not get jet lagged. He slowly scans the area around him and moves slowly. The noise comes again and this time he can hear what was said. His name. And the voice which whispers it is so hauntingly familiar it makes his heart hurt.

Jack hopes this is a dream.

He snaps around and there, the shadow of a man he once knew. Gabe looks dead. A ghost. Jack barely dodge a shotgun blast to the face before Gabe is running away. Jack can’t lose him again. He slaps on his visor and gives chase. Gabe had always been better in the field and it seemed his “death” had not slowed him down. Jack shot once, twice, and then a third time before reaching into his back pocket and grabbing the high fiber mesh wire that was used to help pull heavy duty military vehicles out of ditches.

He made a lasso and threw it to try and catch Gabe. Gabe ducks the first blast with ease, the second one he jumps to the left for and the third is jumped over and the mesh wire loops around his ankle. Gabe turns in the mid air and slices the wire before it can be tugged closed. Gabe rolls from the jump and then takes a harsh right. Jack follows him. Jack prays this was a dream. Gabe leads him into town and he almost gets punched coming back around a shop corner.

Jack ducks and weaves and Gabe takes hit and hit at him. Jack blocks each one and then Gabe sweeps him off his feet and stomps his foot into Jack's stomach. Jack gasps and holds Gabes ankle, twisting it and throwing him to the ground. Jack rolls on top of him and starts punching. Gabe keeps his face covered, blocking the hits.

Jack hopes this is a dream.

He lets his emotions take over. He can’t help it, “Why are you _like_ this?! Why didn’t you _die?!_ If you had _died_ then at least I could have _mourned you, missed you. I could have_ **_avenged_ ** _you!”_

Gabe gets his legs between Jacks and flips them and smashes Jack head into the pavement covered in grass. It hurts because Gabe had never thrown his punches without making sure they would hurt. He gets up and drags Jack with him before tossing him throw a window that had survived the war. Jack gasps as he slides along the glass and into a wall, leaving a crack in it. The roof is missing from this bar. Jack barely gets to his knees before Gabe is on him again and trying to send him through the drywall. Each punch feels like Gabe is breaking his ribs.

Gabe is yelling as he cries, beating into Jack, “I did die! It _hurt! Dying_ hurt, Jack! Because of you I died! Because of you and _me,_ the world is fucked! Because of you and me and our _fucking_ **_mistakes_ ** they have Jesse and they are going to _destroy him_ and there’s nothing I can do to save him!”

Jack feels rage boil inside of him and he manages to get a punch in. It’s hard enough to throw Gabe off and makes him stumble away from Jack. They are both breathing hard and the world is silent for a moment before they launch at each other, snapping out words at each other.

“My fault? I’m not the one who was so damn _proud_ and didn't need to listen to reason!” Jack snaps as he dodges a punch.

Gabe snarls at him, “Yes! _Your_ fault! How often did I try to help you and had it tossed back in my _face_ like I was some stupid asshole who didn’t know what he talking about!”

“Just because you had a better track record doesn’t mean you were the best choice, _Gabriel Reyes!”_

“I never said I _was!_ But you weren’t the best choice either!” he snaps as he takes a punch to the gut. He slips on the glass and takes Jack with him. They roll and punch at each other, the visor snaps off and goes flying into the darkness.

“ **_Was I always such a horrible person to you?!”_ ** Jack yells at him. Gabe looks shocked and they stop fighting. The world is silent around them and their fight is over. Jack breaths heavily. Beneath him Gabe moves to stand and Jack lets him, following. Gabe looks at him for a long moment.

“What did you say?” he asks Jack.

“Was I,” Jack gasps out, “always a horrible person to you?”

Gabe frowns and resets one of his fingers, “Why would you ask me that?”

Jack wipes at his eyes trying to ward the tears away and it doesn’t help, “Because you’re _right_ ! I stole **_everything_ ** from you! I _could_ have declined being promoted; but I _didn’t_ ! I _could_ have listened to you; but I _didn’t_ ! I _could_ have admitted that I was an asshole, but I **_didn’t_ ** ! All because of my pride and it ended up _killing_ you and everything we had fought to build! No wonder you were angry at me; no wonder you hate me.”

Gabriel moves forward and holds Jack close, placing soft kisses on his temple and rubbing his back as Jack, finally, _finally,_ weeps and mourns for what had been taken from them. Gabriel has to get this off his chest while he can. He and Amélie don’t have a lot of time before they have to check in. If they don’t check in then a team if sent in to get them to be reprogrammed. Jack keeps letting out long hiccuping sobs and his whole body jerks with them. Around them the fallen city creaks and moans as the wind settles between the cracks. Ghost look on and understand this kind of weeping.

Gabriel holds his old flame closer because this might be the last time. The end might truly be coming for him and needs this. If this is closure then he’ll embrace it as he flies down to hell. Jack holds him tight enough that if Gabriel had been alive he might have bruised. Gabriel closes his eyes and can feel the tears bubbling to the surface. He doesn’t remember crying after he died. He wonders if he even can anymore.

Gabriel holds Jack close and speaks softly in his ear, “I was never _angry_ at you, Jack. I was _disappointed_ in you, and what you had become. But I was never angry; I was upset and hurt and just...I was done Jackie-boy, I felt older than I should have and was tapered down to my bones when I went to meet you in the Swiss HQ. I was gonna cash in on my retirement and see if we could work things out. But I failed you; I died and you died and the grave _couldn’t_ hold us. But now I’m some...monster held together by God Program nanites. But we have to make things right, Jack, if nothing else, we have to try to make things right.

“Jesse doesn’t deserve to end up like me. Like us. I can’t...” his voice breaks and he clears his throat, “...I can’t let him become another me, Jack. So we _have_ to save him.”

Jack let’s out a shuddering breath and pulls back to rest his head on Gabriel’s, and looks at him with tired, blind eyes, wiping away the tears Gabriel is unaware he has even shed in this one moment of true weakness and strenght, “Tell me the plan, Gabi. I’m ready to save your son.”

Gabriel smiles at that.


	12. X-mas comes early every year to people who don't give a fuck about what month it is

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's time to go, Jesse McCree.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...sorry about the long wait. School and work almost killed me. So please enjoy this chapter. Also, I didn't think we would be getting Sombra so I had to tweek some things. Also, here are all the translations. 
> 
> boyfriend=novio  
> cowboy=vaquero  
> he's a ninja=Es un ninja  
> let's hope he's any good with that bow and arrow then.= Esperemos que sea bueno con ese arco y flecha entonces.

Hanzo has been pacing as the sun sets. The dirt under his feet is now well worn from his pacing. He does not care that two of Talons top guard dogs are helping them. He doesn’t care that he now has a team to back him up. He can  _ smell  _ Jesse now, he can feel the warmth of him. They are smart, these Talon agents. They are trying to hide the lab and base under the rubble of the once proud castle. 

He wants to scoff and smirk. Castles can be broken down and burnt into ash. He lets his jagged nails itch on the pads of his fingers, he grinds his teeth. Habits from childhood he thought he had outgrown. Genji hovers behind him and he wants to lash out, snarl and growl and hiss and  _ tear apart,  _ but he did that already. He bows his head in shame and keep pacing. He already killed his brother once, he won’t do it again. 

He  _ won’t.  _

The plan is too simple to work but he has to try. Jesse had been missing for too long. Almost a year he had been gone and Hanzo can’t take it anymore. The dragons in his heart are restless and they struggle in his skin. They yearn to be free. He tries to calm them but everyday that Jesse is far from him they get louder and their words sweeter. If he was more a monster than a man, Jesse would have been freed long ago. 

The Reaper and Widowmaker speak in hushed tones, Spanish and French flying too low for him to hear every word. He won’t understand most of the anyway. He hears Jesse a few times, his name, Jack Morrison and Ana Amari. And someone named Sombra. Hanzo has heard the name before. She is a doctor the same way Hanzo and Genji are surgeons. Being taught how to take things apart does not mean you are qualified to be more than a killer. 

It is Lucio who braves his ire.

“Hey man,” he says and hovers at his side, his skates shaking under his feet. Dirt and blades don’t mix. Hanzo regards him, and he knows he must look a frightful mess, like some onu out of a horror story, “it’s gonna be ok. We’ll get the cowboy back and then be riding on down to easy street.” 

“How so?” Genji asks. Lucio looks at him and then shoots a look at Hanzo before looking back at him and answering. 

He fiddles with his weapon, tuning the knob back and forth as he answers, “Well, the plan is simple. Bust in, save you boy, take that chick-what’s her name?-Sombra with us and bring down Talon with her help.” 

Hanzo can feel his eyes flash red and gold and mix into black before they settle back to his normal brown, “That woman will not live to see the next rising sun.” 

“Cause of what she’s doing to Jesse? Man, I get it-” Lucio starts but Hanzo cuts him off. 

“No, you do not.” 

Lucio keeps going, “-you love Jesse, I get love, OK? But Talon is a threat to everyone, right? So I get it, this hurts you because they got him and they’re hurting him. But if we don’t take this chick with us, they’ll take more people, maybe more of us, and do  _ worse  _ than what they have done to Jesse. So we gotta stop ‘em. We gotta take Sombra with us.” 

Hanzo scoffs but nods his head. He will see. 

***************

Sombra taps away at the computer and checks up on the cowboy. The doctor, the one using her name(that bitch) is still trying to make him use the God Program in his skull. She pops open her soda and kicks her feet onto the table. When Reaper slides out of the shadows she only throws a smirk over her shoulder at him and raises her soda in greeting. 

“Hey, there he is. So...how is your old  _ novio?”  _ she asks as Gabriel takes off his mask and leans with both hands on the table to look at Jesse. He doesn’t look at her as he answers. 

“Tonight. We do this tonight, Sombra.” 

She gives a low whistle, “That was fast. I can make this work, don’t worry about that. But.... _ el vaquero,  _ he’s in rough shape. He might not make it to the escape, hey...what they hell are we using ot get out of here, anyway?” 

“Ship.” 

“Who all is helping? I need to know to make a good plan.” she says and takes her feet off the table to brace her arms on her knees. 

“Jack, me. Ana, two support, two offense, two snipers, a teleporter.” 

Sombra scoffs, “Who is on par with our lady noir?” 

“Hanzo Shimada and his brother. The omnic they brought with them is being left to pilot the ship, since Jesse might kill him or make him glitch out. The God Program is...unstable.” 

Sombra takes a sip of her soda, “Shimada. I know that name...he was once a big underworld boss. Or was going to be.  _ Es un ninja.  _ Nice. Is it true?” 

“What?” 

“You know,” she says and stands up, placing her drink down and wiggling her fingers at him, “that he and his brother can summon dragons. That shit sounds dope.” 

Gabriel puts his mask back on and places a hand on her shoulder, “Yes. No get ready. The attack happens soon.” 

Sombra nods and calls over her shoulder, “ _ Esperemos que sea bueno con ese arco y flecha entonces.”  _

Gabriel is gone in a mist of smoke. Sombra looks back at the screen. Jesse has just bitten into that bitch doctors face and a piece of cheek was taken as a trophy. She thinks she’ll come to like the cowboy when they meet in person. 

***********

Jesse can feel  _ it  _ growing inside of him. He can feel the way the thing pushes and slides and  _ fills  _ the empty spaces in his body. He can feel it wrapping around his heart by inches and he  _ HATES  _ it. Sombra or whatever the fuck her name is keeps trying to make him use it to command machines. He can. Oh, he can. The light in his cell had been too bright after one session of “tough love” and he had wanted the lights to be off. 

So off they went. 

They had chucked it up to rats eating the wires. The next time a sessions started he wished that his room, which had electric floors for when he was being rowdy, would switch on and kill the sick bastards and they lounged around his prone body. Safe on the top of the chair. The chair itself could be sent back it its holding place under the titles and he would drop down into the lighting storm below. He had killed ten people and fried the wiring for the damn electric trap under his feet. Now they wanted him to do more. And he wasn’t going to. 

As he spit of her cheek fat he closed his eyes. Suddenly he could see text flashing behind his eyes. This was new. It was a simple message. 

_ Can you read this?  _

He thought about it for a moment and then decided, fuck it. He was dead anyway. Sooner or later. He thought of his answer and it was suddenly  _ there,  _ typed out in front of his eyes like he was looking at a damn computer screen. 

_ Yes.  _

 

_ Holy shit! I didn’t think this would work! Ok, so, I know you have no reason to trust me but listen carefully. Your argo ninja boyfriend and his posse are here to bust you out. We’re going with because, fuck Talon and their take over the world bullshit.  _

 

_ You’re right. I ain’t got no reason to trust you. Give me one good one and I’ll be willing to listen to ya.  _

 

_ That woman who calls herself Sombra is a lie. I’m Sombra, the real one. You and Gabriel Reyes, know as Reaper, AKA Edge Lord Chemical Romance, were once part of Blackwatch.  _

 

_ That’s a matter of public record. Any fool who can do a damn Google search can find that out. So try again.  _

 

_ Hanzo Shimada is a real looker and his resting bitch face could win him competitions if he wanted. But he must really love you. He’s carrying around this big old sixshot that is a relic and a cowboy hat. He calls the gun Peacekeeper. Your doing, I guess. _

 

_...what do you want?  _

 

_ To help. So...here’s the plan. Oh and, btw, nice job on making her face match her personality. Anyway, the plan. Gabriel is going to come in and “escort” you back to your cell. Then, Amélie will hold the perimeter with miss Amari. Do you think I could get her autograph? She was so cool to me as a kid.  _

 

_ Yeah. Ana wouldn’t much mind. Wait...she’s alive? Since when?  _

 

_ IDK man, focus, we’re running out of time. A teleporter is being set up and that’s how you get out and to the flight deck. We have two healers coming in with your boyfriend, his brother, Morrison, some Russian chick, and Gabriel himself. The teleport is going to be four floors down from where you are now. Gabe is going to be fighting down while the rest of the crew clears a path on the lower levels. Once everyone is in, I blow the teleporter and we are home free. Sound good to you? _

 

_ What if we fail?  _

 

_ Then I guess all of us are going to needs shrines on  _ El Dia de los muertos.  _ Get ready. It’s almost time to go.  _

 

_ Thank you.  _

 

_ Thank me when we’re safe.  _


	13. If you think this is bad luck just wait for the punch line, kid.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Step one is don't die. Step two is get home. If confused on plan, consult step one until comprehension.

Jesse knows something is up the  _ moment  _ that Reaper comes in. Because it's the same outfit, the same scowl and the same narrowed eyes as Reaper, but the walk is all Gabe. He tracks Gabe with his eyes as he circles the room. The guards barely pay him any mind. As Gabe gets close to the glass of his cell his eyes dart to the door, quick and sure and Jesse  _ knows.  _ The doctor working on resetting his arm is talking on the phone to her wife, and she doesn’t even spare Gabe a second glance when he slides in under the glass as smoke and comes back into a solid form. She doesn’t even stop talking about what to make for dinner when she gets home. 

Can you believe that? Jesse wants to ask Gabe. She has been here to patch me up after each “session” with the guards, every broken bone, and she is as a happy as a clam instead of letting any kind of guilt eat at her. She ends the call and that is when everything starts. Gabe had gone behind her and with one swift twist of his arms her neck snaps. It is a wonderful thing, having a neck. Turn your head too far to either side and your brain will literally hit the kill switch. Because as far as your brain is concerned, you have no clue what the hell you’re doing, so lie down, shut up, and stop being stupid. 

But a snapped neck? You either live and are forever paralyzed or you die. Gabe had learned how to make sure it was a killing blow every time. Jesse is ready for death. He closes his eyes and then he feels himself being pulled free of the damn straps and chair and his feet give out because he hasn’t been able to feel or walk on them for a long,  _ long  _ time. Gabe holds him and Jesse can hear over the roar in his ears now. Alarms and screaming and guns pointed at them in a glass cell. 

He smirks. Deadlock had been a cakewalk compared to Blackwatch. Blackwatch had been an easy ride compared to the torture. This though? This was shooting fish in a barrel. He struggles to stand on his own and Gabe keeps him from taking the short fall to the cold floor below. The God Program in his skull is constant pounding of  _ runrunrunrun,  _ and  _ killkillkillkillkillKillKillKILL.  _

He could. 

The damn thing in his head has told him everything about this place. Like how they had rigged the room up to be a gas chamber if he ever broke out of his cell. The cell itself is tightly sealed, for the most part. The gas goes after easy targets since it has nanites in it. The room can be cleaned out of the gas after two minutes of neurotoxin. He could do it right now. Just a thought and all ten of these assholes, six of whom he has had to “pleasure” of being with, deserve it. 

But someone beats him to the punch with the lights going out and then several grunts of pain and round of gunfire. When the lights come back on, well, Jesse has never been one for fashion, but he knows neon is a kid color. She smirks at him, holding her subauto machine gun and a hand on her hip, nails long and sharp and a pleasant color purple. Gabe moves to the door and she opens it with a flick of her hand. A hacker. Jesse limps along with them, leaving bloody footprints behind. They speak softly and he doesn’t care. He just wants to sleep for a thousand years and more. 

Gabe grips his shoulder tight, digging nails in and Jesse jerks awake and looks at him, “We have a plan, McCree. Step one is you not dying before we get to the first objective. Got it?” Gabe asks him. 

The girl smirks at them over her shoulder as they quickly try to make their way down the hallway, “Don’t be so snippy, Gabi!” 

“Shut up, Sombra.” 

Jesse blinks, “Sombra? Oh,” he chuckles and nods his head at her, “I ‘member ya. The one who told me I was getting out.”

“No duh.” 

Gabe snarls at her, “Sombra.” 

“Chill.” she says with a toss of her hair. They hear something coming down the hall and Sombra  _ literally  _ body checks Jesse to the ground and they vanish as Gabe takes out his guns, enemy bullets chasing after their falling bodies as four guards in heavy armor come around the corner. They are in...a storage closet? Jesse feels sick and she uses all of her strength to pull him to his feet. She slaps his gun, Peacekeeper, in his hand and then smiles at him. 

“How…?” 

She cuts him off with a quick hushing sound and presses her ear to door. She pulls up camera feeds from her hand and Jesse watches, letting to weight and semi-cool metal in his hand ground him. He limped closer to her and watched the camera feeds. He almost wept at what he saw. 

*******************

Lucio jumped down and landed next to Symetra. She was checking on her weapon, making sure it was up to the task. He folded his arms and leaned against the wall next to them. She was setting up the teleporter, but they needed to cover themselves too. He had no clue how such tiny little white balls with giant ass eyes were gonna help them, but he wasn’t about to ask  _ her  _ any of that. Above them a loud noise of one of the tanks rolling overhead and passing by the grate could be heard through the air vent where Lucio had crawled and jumped down. Symetra had gotten in a different way but they had been placed as a team so he had found her as promised. 

She finished fixing the weapon and then made to base of the teleporter. As it flicked to life she pressed the comm in her ear to let them know about it. The twin to this base was somewhere else but he nod idea where. She had smirked at him and told him not to worry about it so he had. Because she said not to. He hated her. Well, not hate, that was a strong word. 

The comm came to life and a woman's voice, not any of the ones he knew, came over the line, “Yo! Madam India, I don’t see no teleporter here at all!” 

Symetra scowled and answered, “I did as instructed. The other base for the teleporter should be in storage closet three-four-six eight on the fifth floor.” 

The woman swore in Spanish and Lucio had to stop himself from chuckling, “NO! We are on the tenth floor and the closest number was eight-six-four-three!” 

Symetra hisses at herself in Hindu and then said, “My apologies. Can he move?” 

“NO! They broke him so much he can barely limp!” 

Lucio itched at his nose and then hopped on, “What about a different plan?” 

“In the middle of this one?” Symetra scowled. He ignored her as the woman gave a low hum and then another curse. 

“We don’t have much choice. What’d you have in mind?” 

“He can’t limp well right? Can he make it to the fire stairs?” 

“Where he’ll be caught?” the woman asked. 

“Sombra is right,” Symeta stated, “the guards are looking for all of us and we don’t have time to try and have McCree fight when he is unable.” 

“Listen to my plan before killing it, will ya?” he snapped at her, “Sombra, you know this place better than us. How many fire stairs do they have?” 

“Four. Why?” 

“We run around and make them chase us instead, and have someone else pick McCree up the other staircase and take him to the teleporter.” 

The silence rings for a short while, “He hasn’t slept or eaten for like, six months, not really. His robot arm is missing and the other one if broken. You are asking me to let this man try and limp down eight flights of stairs while armed guards, who are authorized to shoot to kill FYI, alone?”  

“What other choice do we have?” Symetra asked. 

Sombra wasn’t in front of them, but Lucio could hear her scowl, “You two fucking suck. Fine. Let the others know.” 

Morrison answered her, “We all copy.” 


	14. The Demon of Hanamura is a long way from home, darling.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Genji remembers his brother. This man in front of him...Genji can not say who or what he is anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> English to Japanese Translation  
> I will destroy them. Their children and their children's children shall never know a day of peace when I am through=Watashi wa sorera o hakai surudeshou. Karera no kodomo-tachi to kodomo-tachi no kodomo-tachi wa, watashi ga owatta toki ni heiwa no hi o shirimasen.
> 
> Thank you all for reading, comments, kudos and likes. Have a great winter holiday and I'll see you all next year!

Genji remembers how his brother had been the best swordsman in their family. He had been able to do things that none of them had  _ ever  _ been able to do. When he died, Hanzo had cut all ties with the clan and stopped using a sword. The bow had been his secondary weapon, one he was also very skilled at. As far as he knew, Hanzo hadn’t picked up a blade since that night. But when McCree went missing, he used the bow less and less. And now...well, Genji was grateful that Zenyatta was not a witness to the bloodshed.

Hanzo moved quicker than lightning, the blade cutting through enemy armor and flesh like a hot knife through butter. Hanzo is so hyper focused on finding Jesse that he doesn’t even acknowledge their teammates. He ignores the snipers that Miss amari and Widowmaker take out. He ignores the small cuts he cuts in battle. He ignores Genji as his brother tries to get him to  _ slow down  _ even for a half a second. Hanzo throws open doors and clears outs rooms, calling for Jesse like a dragon would, not a man. A low hum of pain and longing. Genji can hear it and after the first six levels are left in a bloody state, he stops talking to Hanzo with words and speaks to him like a dragon. 

His brother is in so much pain. He needs Jesse. Genji remembers when their grandmother died. Their father had this type of pain for many years. A sound that made the ears ring and screech to be near it too long. Jesse might be able to hear it, but that was a slim chance. From what he has seen of the others they have found, death is a mercy and a wanted friend. He prays that Jesse is in better health, for his brother will not care about his own life, should Jesse McCree be knocking on heavens door. 

The longer they fight through the base, the more Hanzo screams for Jesse. He is losing hope and Genji can not lose his brother now that he has him back. As they come to a small intersection to rest, Hanzo paces and calls for Jesse. A whimper and a cry all in one. Genji pleads to his brother to rest, for just a moment. One moment to catch their breath. Hanzo bobs in place, his head swinging around to look for Jesse. 

They need to find him. 

As the headset crackles to life his heart sinks and he looks at his brother. Hanzo can still hear and comprehend; he is choosing not to. 

_ “Yo! Madam India, I don’t see no teleporter here at all!”  _

Symetra answered,  _ “I did as instructed. The other base for the teleporter should be in storage closet three-four-six eight on the fifth floor.”  _

The woman swore in Spanish,  _ “NO! We are on the tenth floor and the closest number was eight-six-four-three!”  _

Hanzo almost bolts for the stairs but Genji moves just a hair quicker and stops his brother from moving. They need to know more before they charge in. It might cost Jesse his life. He tells Hanzo as much and he becomes stone under Genji's cool, metallic hands. Genji grips his wrist firmly as they listen. 

Symetra hisses at herself in Hindu and then said, “ _ My apologies. Can he move?”  _

_ “NO! They broke him so much he can barely limp!”  _

Hanzo bows his head and hides his face in his little brother's shoulder. Genji is more omnic than human. Metal is now 80% of his body. His brother is still 80% pride. He will never tell Hanzo he can feel the tears landing on him. He thinks he won’t ever tell anyone. Not even Zenyatta.

Hanzo needs to feel this, because if he doesn’t, he might just break. More than Jesse, he fears. 

Lucio hopped on,  _ “What about a different plan?”  _

_ “In the middle of this one?” _ Symetra snapped. 

_ “We don’t have much choice. What’d you have in mind?”  _ the new voice of the new woman asked with a clearly heard snap in her tone. 

_ “He can’t limp well right? Can he make it to the fire stairs?”  _

_ “Where he’ll be caught?” _ the woman asked. 

_ “Sombra is right,”  _ Symeta stated,  _ “the guards are looking for all of us and we don’t have time to try and have McCree fight when he is unable.”  _

_ “Listen to my plan before killing it, will ya?” he snapped at her, “Sombra, you know this place better than us. How many fire stairs do they have?”  _

_ “Four. Why?” _

_ “We run around and make them chase us instead, and have someone else pick McCree up the other staircase and take him to the teleporter.”  _

The silence rings for a short while,  _ “He hasn’t slept or eaten for like, six months, not really. His robot arm is missing and the other one if broken. You are asking me to let this man try and limp down eight flights of stairs while armed guards, who are authorized to shoot to kill FYI, alone?”   _

Hanzo moves suddenly from his spot and grabs Genji by the face, makes them look each other in the eye. Genji feels a shiver of fear roll down his spine. The once warm brown eyes of his brother are now an icy metallic blue sheen that covers them entirely. Genji can feel the claws that have replaced the blunt fingernails. The sword Hanzo carries seems to sing in demonic glee. His brother has an aura of pure  _ bloodlust  _ and Genji dares not even breath to harshly. Hanzo snarls at him,  _ “Watashi wa sorera o hakai surudeshou. Karera no kodomo-tachi to kodomo-tachi no kodomo-tachi wa, watashi ga owatta toki ni heiwa no hi o shirimasen!”  _

_ “What other choice do we have?”  _ Symetra asked. 

Sombra wasn’t in front of them, but Genji could hear her scowl, “ _ You two fucking suck. Fine. Let the others know.”  _

Morrison answered her,  _ “We all copy.”  _

Genji only sees his brothers yellow hair ribbon fall to the ground and the screams of those he has found find him. He gulps, hoping to make his suddenly dry throat work. He picks up the ribbon and follows after...well. Genji remembers his brother. That man in front of him...Genji can not say who or  _ what  _ he was anymore. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In order to make sure that this story is the best it can be, please tell me about your likes, dislikes, comments, questions, and concerns with the story. I am happy to answer them as soon as I can!


	15. Give me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy worthy of an Oscar.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jesse McCree needs a nap and a hug. Also no one is dead. No one dies in this chapter. I am leaving it at a cliff hangar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *kicks open door* EIGHT PAGES! No one dies it just leaves off at a cliff hangar. Happy holidays to everyone and please enjoy the longer chapter. Also please listen to Saturn by Sleeping at Last while reading. Thank you and enjoy!! Also no one dies at the end of this chapter. No one dies at all.

Jack and Gabe are a little too good at playing tag with each other. With other people? It was almost too easy. When Jack fakes Gabe attacks. When Gabe attacks Jack won’t fake. It’s a little hard to keep track of them sometimes. Ana wants to smack them over the head because of that. 

How in the world is she suppose to shoot healing darts at them when Jack darts out of the way too much and Gabe can become smoke? She’ll think of something. As she lies on her stomach,  _ that woman  _ stands above and provides cover fire. The enemy has little choice but to play defense. Try and attack or get hit by sniper fire. She can hear Lucio skating around over the comms and Symmetra is giving the enemy hell. She looks to the right, a little further down the hangar, as Zarya lobs pulse bombs from her gun at the enemy trying to get in. Mercy is power amping her and she goes back to looking at her boys. 

She missed this. 

“Your reputation proceeds, Ana.”  _ she  _ says as she reloads her rifle. 

Ana grits her teeth, “As does yours, Widow Lacroix.” 

Amélie takes a deep breath and then fires, dropping one of the Talon agents and then takes aim next, “You are a widow as well, as I seem to recall.” 

Gabe laughs like a mad man over the comms and chuckles, “Just like old times.” 

She can hear Jack chuckle with him and she has to add her two cents in, “Right. Except the part where you became a homicidal murder.” 

Gabe laughs loudly and long and she watches as he body slams a man into the ground, but Jack comes to his ex-lovers defense, “Ana. You say that like he wasn’t always like this.” 

This gets all three of them giggling like children and Amélie drops two more enemies. 

“He missed you both, you know.” she says softly and Ana turns her head to glare at her, “In his moments of clarity, he missed you both so much. He missed everyone he said. But he mostly missed the three people he considered his family.” 

“Jesse, Jack and I.” she says with a scoff, “I’m surprised you know anything about it, Lacroix.” 

Amélie looks down at Ana who has gone back to shooting, “I had a life before this. One that was taken from me. Why wouldn’t I know about it?” 

“Because you killed your family in cold blood?” Ana snaps, “Gerard was a fool to love someone like you.” 

Amélie scowls and goes back to shooting, muttering under breath, “You don’t know anything about him.” 

Ana knew enough about him. But she knew very,  _ very  _ little about Amélie Lacroix. 

********

Zenyatta knows that tapping his fingers on armrest will not improve matters. He is most likely having an anxiety attack. Humans are known to have them often in highly emotional situations. The whole human body can experience fatigue, restlessness, and even sweat. The behavioral changes can be starling, as humans tend to be become very irritable and upset when having an attack. The often feel they can’t breath and will take gasping breaths, trying to pull in too much air. He is not human. 

His soul is aware but the body is metal. Lights and clockwork. He can do none of these things. But he never taps his fingers or paces. This is is version, he supposes, of an attack. Genji has often been the one to calm him down and before him had been his brothers and sisters at the temple. Mondatta had done it so often that he knew when he was going to have an attack before he even did sometimes.

Mondatta had been the best of them. He begins to hum a song, the title is  _ Saturn,  _ he think anyway. Genji had liked to listen to it when he had panic attacks back at the temple. He didn’t have them as often anymore. It was a band from when his grandmother had been around.  _ Sleeping at last.  _ Genji said that she like to listen to them a lot. 

She had loved this song the most though. Genji often joked about how he was going to live on mars and been a space man as a child. Zenyatta felt a kinship with stars. All that power and no one ever saw it firsthand. They only ever saw the old photographs of a light millions of years away and said how wonderful it must have been. No one understand how much sorrow and heartache a star must feel in its prime. It can only remember the good old days, but never the here and now. 

Starlight last, but not the stars. 

He knows that so long as Jesse McCree is missing and has the God Program inside of him, he can not help anyone. He shivers. The God Program had been the end of machines. It had been the start of enlightenment. But it had come at a terrible price. War and death and anger and hurt. Lives and loved one lost in the sea of fire they had spread. 

He had not been around when the war had been going on. He had been made at the end. Mondata had been made in the middle of it. They had shared many memories. Zenyatta had wept at the death his brother had to witness. Mondatta often said that just because one is  _ aware  _ did not mean they had a soul. The God Programs had been aware but they had no soul inside of them to look at right and wrong. 

They saw the logic of their plan and that was the end of it. Logic above all else. Humans were the problem. Zenyatta had seen its point of view, but not entirely. Humans were a race that had to learn in small steps, who had to suffer and bleed to earn their enlightenment. Was it any wonder so many were angry at the machines  _ they  _ had built when they had done what humans had to suffer to achieve? No. 

No it wasn’t. 

Mondata had often compared the ideals of the God Program to being a pyrrhic victory for them. Zenyatta now worries that this new Overwatch will follow that path again. You have won the war, but at what cost? Will Jesse be the first loss in this war? He hopes not. Hanzo would not stand for the loss of Jesse McCree. Just like Genji would not stand for his loss. 

He knows he is a ball of distressed and nervous energy.

He knows he misses his brothers and sisters back in Nepal.

He misses Mondatta. 

The comm screams to life and Genji’s voice cries out, “Master!” 

Zenyatta knows what he must do. God Program or no, he will stand by and let this be a pyrrhic victory for them. He looks at the pilot, “Please take me back. I am needed.” 

The pilot looks at him in shock, “But the boss said-”

“You will either turn around or I will jump ship and get there myself.” 

The pilot looks at him for a long moment and then sighs, “Damn crazy robot. Anything else you want me to do.” 

Zenyatta thinks for a moment, “Yes. Miss Oxton and Song are in Mexico at the moment. Please contact them and Winston. We may need backup. Have them call “the boss” as soon as they can.” 

“Sure. I can do that.” 

********

Jesse watches as Sombra bites at her nails and then swears a blue streak before whipping her head to look at him. She blows a strand of hair out of her face and stomps over, handing him...he is not even going to guess but the nanites inside of him tell him that it is some high tech thing. So he goes with that. She taps on the glass top with her index finger, the  _ tinktinktink,  _ loud in the small room. 

“This is something I whipped up to get away quick. You toss it and when you press the button it goes to where you tossed it. This is gonna help you cause you can’t even limp quickly. So use this to get down the stairs. Fair warning, it has a limit. I’ve used it twice and the limit is six.” 

Jesse nods his head as she hooks it onto his low riding medical pants and slaps the trigger into his waiting palm. His gun it tucked near his tailbone, “Thank ya kindly.” 

She lets out a  _ tch  _ noise before she loads her gun and grips the door handle, “Thank me if we live.” she opens the door slowly and peeks out, moving her head inch by inch. She glances back at him with a smirk, “See ya later.” And then she is gone and the door creaks open. Jesse limps away as fast as he can. Behind him lies bloody footprints. He finds the clearly marked fire stairs and it is a struggle to open the door and close it behind him. 

As he catches his breath on the door he hears machine gun fire and taunt in Spanish. He smirks. No wonder Gabe likes her. He hears heavy boots run down the stairs above him and then use the door one floor above him to get back out into the hallway. 

He waits. 

And waits. 

His feet bleed and his vision blurs.

He waits. 

When he is sure that they won’t come back in, he limps over to the railing and looks down. It spirals like a top and he can’t see the bottom. The darkness reaches up to him. He unhooks the little device and drops it. He counts softly out loud. The device hits and he holds his breath. No one comes to see what made the  _ thunk  _ noise. 

He got to twenty. It’s a long way down. He hold the trigger and he gazes at it. Sombra has put little purple and pink skulls into the metal. It looks like a lip gloss container. He presses the button on top and he is woozy at the bottom. He struggles to bend to pick the device up but once he does he keeps limping. 

The only light is the little in floor emergency ones. He keeps tight to the wall and he has to stop often to catch his breath. A few times guards run past him going down different hallways. He can see a light at the end of a hallway. He limps toward it and he collapses to his knees. He coughs up blood and wipes it away with a grimace. The God Program is screaming in his head.

It sounds likes his mother.

His sisters. 

Hanzo. 

Mercy will know what to do. She’s always been smart like that. As he struggles to his feet, sick and dizzy and weak, he hears it. That one voice that he  _ knows.  _ The voice that the God Program can’t get right at all. He can feel himself smile like a damn fool as he limps toward the light and the voice. 

“Hanzo!” 

The man is yelling in Japanese and then he stops, “Jesse?” 

He is almost free of the blinding light, “Hanzo!” 

A figure is suddenly in the light, a dark mass. The hair is long and Jesse knows that body anywhere, “Jesse?!” 

Jesse collapses into the waiting arms of his lover, “Hanzo!” 

They kiss and hug and Hanzo spins him around for a moment and then holds his face in one hand and supports him with the other. Hanzo looks like a demon but the marks and the sick blue skin is fading back to the same shade of flesh he has always known. Hanzo peppers his face with kisses, “I thought I had lost you.” 

“Aww darling,” Jesse breaths as he tries to stand tall, “you couldn’t lose me if ya-” Jesse feels a pain in the back of his neck that travels all the way through to his throat. Hanzo is frozen in fear and blood is splattered all on his face. Jesse tries to swallow and he can’t. He starts to choke and he can feel himself slipping, losing his grip on the floor. The world is static and all he can see is Hanzo's mouth moving and he is so  _ afraid.  _ Hanzo has never been afraid before. The marks and skin are coming back.

Jesse sees him shoot a glare up behind them and his eyes flash white and Jesse...he can’t stay awake after that. He closes his eyes. 

****************

Hanzo can only watch in abject horror as the arrow seems to come from nowhere just to pierce Jesse in the back of his neck and silence him. The arrowhead juts out like the finger of an angry god at Hanzo, red and shiny and Jesse  _ chokes  _ on his own blood. He begins to fall and Hanzo holds him close, making his fall a gentle lowering instead. He keeps saying his name, hoping this is all a dream. Jesse blinks rapidly and gasps for breath around the arrow in his throat, his one hand clutching at the skin on Hanzo's upper arm, his nails leaving scratches along the fine lines of the dragons that had been placed there long ago. He looks up to the rafters and there is a woman he had never hoped to see again. She smirks at him and notches another arrow. 

“Shimada Hanzo,” she calls down to him in a jovial tone, as though they are old friends who have found each other again, “long time no see. I thought that after disgracing your clan you would have the good sense to die under a rock to save them further embarrassment.” 

The metal footsteps of his brother don’t even make him turn, “Jesse. I need you to hold on for me. Please.” 

Genji places a hand on his shoulder and yells up at the woman, “You have no idea what you’ve done!” 

“What I’ve done?” she laughs and shakes her head before lowering her bow, “I have done the  _ impossible.  _ The God Programs hated humans with the passion only rivaled by the sun. But now, it lies in a semi-fuctioning state inside the mind and body of a human. Or...it did at any rate.” 

“So you killed him for nothing then?” Hanzo asks. 

“Why target Jesse McCree?” Genji snaps, sword drawn. 

“The man that the ice king himself, Shimada Hanzo, loves and adores above all others? Why wouldn't I want to see the son and heir of the once proud Shimada Clan brought so low?” 

“Who are you?!” Genji demands and Hanzo, who has not looked away from her since she shot the arrow, is the one who answers.

“I remember you. The bastard daughter of the head of the Yoshimoto Clan. Cecilia Barton.” 

Genji turns to look down at his brother, “Cecilia? But...that’s impossible.” 

She bows at them in a mocking manner, all smiles and womanly virtue, “In the flesh. Or what’s left after you killed me, Hanzo.” 

“I did what I had to.” he says softly and brushes the hair from Jesse's face. 

“As have I.” she says with a smug smirk. 

He makes sure Jesse's head is pillowed in his lap, as he tries to steam the bleeding. He knows it is effortless. He knows that. But he can make the world burn for this transgression. He kisses him one last time, places him gently on the floor and stands. She takes aim at his still figure and in one blink to the next he is gone. 


	16. There will be other ships, and other souls to sail them.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lena pinched the bridge of her nose, “Yes or no? The right and proper Johnny Law is following us and we can’t get caught.”   
>  Roadhog put Junkrat down as he gave a gruff laugh and then spoke through his gasmask, “We have gotten out of prison before. You two...well, you wouldn’t last long.”   
>  Hana gave a scoff, “And how did this scrawny dirt boy survive?”   
>  Junkrat gave her a smirk, “I can eat a vegemite sandwich real well, poppet.”

Lena kicked the last Talon agent in the head as the cops came around the corner in a mad rush. She and Hana, in her meka, flee the scene to where Junkrat and Roadhog have been disabling a bomb. The getaway care(if the open top piece of junk that ran off nuclear power could be called a car) was only a few feet away. Hana sent her meka into the sky and let it self destruct. Junkrat turned to look at him with his toxic yellow eyes and gave them his goofy grin as he waved to them from atop Roadhogs shoulders. 

“G’day, mates!” he called. Lena came to stand by Roadhog.

“Are ya done, love?” she asked as she eyes the guts of the bomb. 

Junkrat gave a simple shrug of his bony shoulder, “Ask Roadie.” 

Hana came to stand next to them and chuckled, “OMG you don’t know?” 

“I  _ make  _ bombs,” Junkrat said with a huff, “I don’t take apart works of art.” 

Lena pinched the bridge of her nose, “Yes or no? The right and proper Johnny Law is following us and we can’t get caught.” 

Roadhog put Junkrat down as he gave a gruff laugh and then spoke through his gasmask, “We have gotten out of prison before. You two...well, you wouldn’t last long.” 

Hana gave a scoff, “And how did this scrawny dirt boy survive?” 

Junkrat gave her a smirk, “I can eat a vegemite sandwich real well, poppet.” 

Roadhog laughed loudly at that and made his way to the care, Junkrat behind him with an insane giggle. Hana itched her head and Lena gave a great sigh before zooming into the car and calling for Hana. As they drove off her comm went off and she answered.

“Hello!” 

The caller spoke over the noise of rushing air, “Miss Oxton?!” 

Lena kicked at the back of Junkrats seat as he began to blast a local radio station. He turned to stick his tongue out at her but did turn down the radio, “Speaking.” 

“I understand you are already on an assignment, but things are going south here in Germany!” 

“I can see if Winston can get us there,” she said, “but we are still in the red zone in Mexico.” 

The caller gave a yelp and then a cry of, “No! Don’t jump!” 

“What’s going on?” she asked with concern into the comm. 

The caller, the pilot no doubt, answered, “Miss Oxton, please get here ASAP!” 

The line went dead and Junkrat, who had not turned fully around but who had hooked his crossed arms over the back of his seat, raised an eyebrow, “Trouble?” 

Lena nodded, “Sounds like. Mako, can you get us to the old hideaway quick as a bunny? We need to call Winston.” 

He didn’t turn away from the road as he took a hairpin turn with a small grunt. The car almost threw them from their seats, but then landed back on four wheels, “The ape won’t be happy about this.” 

Hana popped her gum, “He’s right. Winston didn’t even want them to go to Germany.” 

“Jesse might be there.” Lena said and began to fiddle with her chest piece, “Hanzo and Genij can’t be out in the field alone for months on end just looking by themselves. It’s not right.” 

Junkrat mussed his hair with his hands, “Why not? Roadie and I are alone all the time together. It ain’t never hurt us none.” 

“Hanzo tried to kill Genji.” Lena said.

Mako gave a bark of laughter, “I almost killed him. What’s your point?” 

Hana only looked at Lena, “We don’t have to call. We could just...go.” 

Junkrat bounced in his seat, “I  _ love  _ it!” 

“No.” Mako and Lena said at the same time. 

Junkrat turned to pout at Mako, “But Roadie~!” 

Mako reached over and grabbed his face, making him stay still for a moment before speaking, “We can’t just go yet. We need a plan. Remember Vegas?” 

Junkrat spoke around his pinched cheeks in Makos’ large hand, “Oh...right.” 

Hana gave a snort and then asked, “So what are we gonna do then? Cause we know the big lug won’t let us go and we can’t just steal a plane-”

“We could!” Junkrat said with a manic gleam in his eyes. 

“-to Germany. So what is the plan here?” 

Lena bit at her nails and then an idea came to her. She smirked at Hana, “I have an idea. Let me make a call.” 

*******

Miss McDonald had been having the best sleep of her life in over two days. Being a pilot for an airline meant sleep was a wonderful daydream until you landed at home. Which is why when her phone went off she slapped the IGNORE button and then tucked her head back under her pillow, pulling her partner's pillow closer to her body to cuddle with it. Just as she was about to fall back asleep the phone went off again. IGNORE. She then placed the phone in her bedside draw and slammed it shut before once more getting comfy and letting out a long sigh as her body relaxed. It lasted all of ten minutes before the phone was crying again, muffled but still crying, from the drawer. She rubbed at her face, sat up in bed and grabbed the phone. 

“What?” she snapped. 

“Sorry ta wake ya love.” 

She glared down at the phone, and the horrid numbers 5:23AM read back at her from the top of the screen and the name of someone who should have called her a long time ago, “Sorry or not, I don’t even wanna talk to you right now.” 

“Oh but love,” the other whined, “I was busy!” 

“Save it.” 

“Can we make a deal?” 

She fell back into bed with a huff, “Fine. Tell me.” 

“On Christmas, next year, we can visit my family. Scouts’ honor!” 

She felt a smile on her face, “Am I getting a fancy present? Better than the scarf this year?” 

“Sure. What would ya like?” 

“A ring.” 

“I’ll try my best!” 

She chuckled and sat up again, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed and standing up, “So. What do ya need?” 

“A ride. Me and some friends.” 

“Sure. You at King’s Crossing?” 

A light and nervous laugh came down the line, “Uh...no! We are at Santa Maria Airport.” 

“...........” 

“In Mexico.” 

“...........” 

“Emily? Are ya there love?” 

Emily pinched her nose, “Does this have to do with that old super secret boy band you were a part of?” 

“....yes?” 

Emily laughed and then said, “I’ll be there soon. Love you, Lena.” 

“Love you too!” 

*******

Dying is something that is often talked about but not many can say they have  _ died.  _ Jesse can think of a few people. Gabe. Genji. His sister. But they came back and thus it made Jesse wonder if death was more a sad old man who only wanted temporary company, but often times ended up with permanent house guest through no fault of his own. Jesse had to think like that because what he was looking at now made very little sense to him. 

Well, that was a lie. He knew what he was looking at, in the same way someone looking at a cooking piece of meat knew what it was, but to explain the process or even what  _ kind  _ of meat was a very different story. This is what he knows. He died, is dead, is dying.  This place looks a lot like home but all desert looks the same. Flat, hot, dry, and seeming to have no end on the horizon. But it did end.

Right into a long drop into the vast universe, a gaping maw of unknown terror he had no name for. Jesse likes to remember his mother and sisters when he is truly afraid. His mother often told him that people came from the stars, and that they had been stardust, the soul of the whole universe. Then they found this place, Earth, home, and wept at the beauty of it and never wanted to leave. He likes to think some people are more star than others. But he knows that probably isn’t true. The little building in front of him says  _ Pawn Shop,  _ and he is confused.

He has no memories of being in one. Then again, most of his teenage years and hazy with drugs and booze. He is wearing his favorite blue flannel shirt and old, comfy jeans, with his boots, belt and hat. Jesse McCree looks at the little store  _ literally  _ hanging off the edge of the desert and about to swan dive into the wide openness of space. He is dead, has died, is dying. What the hell does he have to be afraid of? Not much anymore. But damn if he might not drown in his regrets. 

He walks the short walk to the door and pushes it open. The little bell above him calls out and a girl, no, a woman, no older than him looks up from her magazine and looks him over before shutting the magazine and smiling at him. 

“Can I help you?” she asks. 

Jesse looks around. There is so much  _ stuff,  _ and he has no idea if this is the middle of the road to hell, to the start of the swan dive into heaven, “I don’t rightly know.” 

She nods her head. He looks at her, really looks, and he sees his sister. God, he hadn’t thought of her in so long. Well, he has since being caught, but before? He didn’t like to think of his family. 

The woman who looks likes hi sister nods her head softly, “Well, I can tell you one thing I can do for you.” 

“Shoot.” 

“I can tell you about ghost.” 

Jesse laughs and his fingers itch to smoke, “Oh yeah? Lay it on me.” 

She leans close to him, her arms folded on the glass counter top, “Ghost don’t want revenge. They want answers.” 

Jesse blinks slowly at her, “My ma used ta tell me that.” 

“Our mother was very smart.” she says. 

He looks at this woman with a critical eye and almost weeps. The same hair as their mother, black as sin and pretty as a postcard. Deep and sad brown eyes, his eyes, their fathers eyes. The same little cupid bow mouth and the tiny little scar at the right side from where she had gotten into a fight. The star pattern freckles all over her face. He moves without thought and cups her tan face in his large hands, “Alex?” 

She covers his hands with her own, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” 

He shakes his head, “No, you can’t be dead.” 

She puts his hands down and moves to come stand next to him, “Everyone dies, Jesse. And no one goes before their time. It’s kind of what their time means.” 

Jesse can feel his knees trying to buckle so he leans on the counter and so does she. He rubs at his face, “I’m dead?” 

Alex gives a tiny giggle, “Not yet. Some part of you is holding on awful tight to life. A memory of someone is keeping you tied there. If you’re not careful you might end up life dad.” 

“Dad?” 

“Yep.” Alex answers, “When he died, mom loved him so much that it kept his soul here. He was the ghost in the house.” 

Jesse remembers the ghost in the house of his childhood. It wasn’t mean or even evil. It was downright helpful to be honest. It was kind, if he was being honest with himself. It felt kind and sad and sometimes a little lonely. He wondered if his father, this ghost, had been lonely because they had never talked to him or because he missed his wife, their mother. It would close doors behind you, shut off light you had left on. 

It even brought the mail in. How he didn’t know but in the whole fifteen years of him living at home, he knows for a fact that none of them went out to check it. He rubs at his jaw with his flesh hand and then shakes his head to clear it. This is too much all at once. He breaths out, “Well hot damn,” 

Alex laughs at this as she hauls herself onto the top of the counter, bracing herself on her hands, which curl around the edge of the glass. Her long black hair is like a curtain around her face and Jesse has missed that face. She smirks at him, “So are you going to tell me?” 

“Tell ya what?” 

“Who loves you so much that you can’t cross over yet?” 

Jesse blinks at her and then feels his face flush, “Mind your own dang business.” 

“It’s my kids.” she says and Jesse looks at her, “They keep me here. I think it might be Danni too. They had never been good at words but...I like to think that they loved me so much in life that in death I would have no unfinished business. I was right. This place is for people who have nothing left to do or want to do in life. But something is keeping us.” 

Jesse looks down at his feet, “I’m an uncle?” 

“Three girls, two boys.” Alex rubs at her forehead, “If my math is right then the oldest, Shannon, should be about fourteen.” 

“I’m an uncle.” Jesse laughs out and then slides down to the floor, hands in his lap, limp and wonderstruck, “You had kids, got married. You had a whole life?” 

Alex raises an eyebrow at him as he turns his head to look up at her, “What did you think I was doing while you were away?” 

“I...I dunno.” Jesse admits, “I had this image in ma head. Ya never really stopped...being...I keep seeing ya as the seventeen year old girl who chased me half a mile on bare feet to try ta talk me outta joining up with the Deadlock Gang.” 

“To be fair,” Alex says as she uses her foot to nudge his shoulder, “most people look at their loved ones and never see the passage of time that well. You get  _ older,  _ sure, but...you don’t see the  _ old  _ until it’s there. Like really there. We never see the horrible parts of life that we don’t want to, Jesse.” 

“Hanzo.” he says and reaches up to hold her ankle and lean his head on her shin, “His name is Hanzo. Ally, he’s so good and sweet ta me.” 

She reaches down and pets his hair, “I know. I can see it in you. He loves you so much, Jesse. Which is why this is hard for me to say.” 

“What?” 

“You have a choice. The clock hits noon and then you have to choose. Stay here and die, or go back and try to fight to live.” Alex says and Jesse looks up at her and she looks down at him, “I don’t know what happens if you go back and then die again.” 

“I...I can go back?” 

Alex nods, “Everyone can go back. It’s just a matter of getting there. And if you want to get back at all.” 

Jesse gets to his feet with a huff and holds her shoulders and he looks her in the eyes, “How? Tell me how!” 

“Make me a promise and I will.” 

“Anything,” 

She smiles sadly at him and cups his cheek in one cold hand, “Oh, Jesse.” she sighs and her voices seems to distort and wave, “You should never say that.” 

“Tell me!” he snaps at her and jerks away. 

Her image wavers and the whole shop falls away, everything falls away and he is left, alone, in the vast void. Her voice still calls out to him, “There will be other boats, and other souls to sail them. Promise me that you will visit my children at least once. Tell them their mother loved them and she is sorry for leaving them.” 

“I will.” he says, “There family, damnit. I owe you at least this.” 

The void is silent for a short moment, “The God Program...if you need to know what happened, who made this...go to South Africa. A man is buried there, a very important man. Follow the trail of breadcrumbs. You won’t like what you find.” 

“Why don’t ya just tell me?” Jesse asks, “Why don’t the dead ever just tell the living what they want us to do?!” 

“The dialog between the living and the dead is complicated, Jesse.” 

“How?! Tell that!” he says as he lifts his arm above him. The void shivers around him and a tiny crack of light breaks open in the far distance. He begins to walk toward it as the voice of his sister, over lapped with a thousand other voices, answers. 

“The living tell the dying, not to die. The dead do not listen. The dead tell the living not to mourn them. The living do not listen. The conversation between them is heavy with guilt. We don’t listen past our own grief and regret.” 

Jesse stops at the light, “What happens now?” 

“That is up to you.” 

“I want to live.” he says. 

“Then do so.” 

He reaches for the light.


	17. All the outs in free

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The mind plays tricks, you are confused.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations from Google. Sorry if they are wrong!   
>  “Big brother, if you destroy this place, Jesse will not live.” =  
> “He will live. Your lover keeps him here. When the doctor arrives she shall fix him.”   
> "Angela is not an angel, Hanzo.”  
> “No. She might not be. But I am a demon in mourning. I will be satisfied, or die trying.”   
> “DON’T BE LIKE FATHER!”  
> “I’m not. Father never had the courage to kill his brothers or his father. I have done both.”   
> “Father died by his own hand, Hanzo!”   
> “Genji, sweet little brother, it’s time we stopped looking back at our blood soaked past and instead looked to the blood soaked future.”   
> "WHAT WOULD JESSE SAY?"  
> "Do the dead speak?"
> 
> Also, Hanzo is going kinda crazy right now, so sorry about that! And thank you for waiting. School is almost over and then the summer will be here.

Hanzo moved like rushing water and Genji had trouble keeping up with him and Cecillia. The dragons leave behind blue streaks of neon so bright it hurts to look at. Cecillia had a laugh that was more of a shriek, it echoed off the high steel walls. He pressed down on Jesses’ wound, the blood becoming sticky and tacky under his metal hand. He flinched as he felt someone place a hand on his shoulder and he jerked his head to look at who it was. Zenyatta got to his knees and moved Genji's’ hands, replacing them with his own, and then gently moved Jesse to his lap. He began to glow, the sweet humming of the iris filling the room, and Genji watched as Jesse's’ eyes fluttered under his eyelids.

Zenyatta spoke softly to him, “Go help your, brother, Genji. I will keep Jesse tethered to this world until the good doctor can get to us.” 

Genji looked up at the clashing titans above him and then jumped. Her sword hit his and Hanzo slammed her down. Her body made a crater in the floor. As he landed on one of the ceiling railings, Hanzo seemed to float for a brief moment before diving down at her. Cecilia and Hanzo locked eyes and she smirked at him, “Is this all you can do, Shimada?” 

“You do not know what I can do.” Hanzo hissed at her and then grabbed her by her hair and threw her through the eastern facing wall, leaving a jagged hole in it. Hanzo let out a roar that shook the building and Genji landed next to him. 

Genji placed his hand, tacky with the blood of Jesse, on his brothers deathly cold and blue tinted shoulder, “Ani, anata ga kono basho o hakai sureba, Jesse wa iki raremasen.” 

Hanzo turned his head in such an human way that Genji shivered. Hanzo gave him a smile that looked like the maw of a  _ real  _ dragon, “Kare wa ikirudeshou. Anata no koibito wa kare o koko ni tojikomeru. Isha ga tōchaku shitara, kanojo wa kare o shūsei surudeshou.."

“Angela wa tenshide wanai, Hanzo. ” he said as Hanzo moved away from him. 

“Ie, kanojo wa sōde wanai kamo shiremasen. Shikashi, watashi wa aitō no onidesu. Watashi wa manzoku sa reru, matawa tameshite shinudeshou. ” Hanzo said over his shoulder with a smirk and then he was gone again. Genji ran after him. 

************************

Junkrat hated flying. It was too high and too  _ loud _ and too  **much** . He remembers being a kid and playing in the gutted remains of the planes that had been dropped from heaven by  **_The Bomb_ ** . Mako used to tell him about how the planes used to be able to fly through storms. Well, the machine fell anyway, so  **_The Bomb_ ** was a better thing. At the moment, Tracer was cooing at her girlfriend in the cockpit on their way to Germany, D.VA was fixing her meka and he was curled into the gut of Mako because  _ fuck flying to the sun and back.  _ As it gave a jerk because they hit a pocket of air, he tucked his head further into Mako's neck. 

Mako rubbed his back and kept humming some old song from his homeland. D.VA walked over to them, covered in oil and wiping her hands on a cloth. She jerked her chin at Junkrat, “What’s wrong with him?” 

“Don’t like flying.” Mako rumbled. 

D.VA smirked, “So...unless he blows himself up then it's not the right way to fly, huh?” 

Junkrat turned to glare at her and stuck out his tongue, “Eat a vegemite sandwich, ya tasmanian devil.” 

D.VA laughed, “That’s you, not me. I’m sure Mako loves it.” 

“You assume he has control.” Mako deadpand. 

D.VA gave a noise and twisted her face into that expression that children give their parents when they show too much affection to each other. 

Tracer called back from the cockpit, “ETA to landing is five minutes, people! Get ready!” 

“So,” D.VA said softly, “what do think we’re going to find when we get there?” 

Mako stood up and put Junkrat down, testing the weight of his hook before answering, “A bloodbath.” 

*****************

Gabe and Jack ducked behind a wall to catch their breath as bullets flew past them. The sniper fire had been moved at least ten times while Ana and Amélie move to avoid being caught. Lucio and Satya had come to help them fight, staying close to Zarya. Angela had gotten the comm from Zenyatta and had fled to go and try to save Jesse in the other half of the compound. Jack held onto his ribs with one arm while the other hand loosely held his gun. Gabe was simply breathing heavily. He looked over at Jack and shook his head. 

“You’re getting old, Jackie-boy.” 

Jack coughed out a laugh, “Same age as me ass.” 

Gabe looked at him, “My body is still thirty-six years old, Jackie. I don’t age, remember? Or die for that matter.” 

“Well,” Jack said and lifted his gun back up, “Jesse might so we have to give Anglea time to save him. This fight ain’t over.” 

“It’s never  _ over,  _ Jack.” Gabe chuckled, “You just get breaks sometimes.” 

“Shut up and fight, edge-lord.” Jack snapped. 

Gabe laughed as made himself into mist, “Fine,  _ dad.”  _

*******************

The bone had been shot right through. The skin and muscles were torn from the entry and the voice box had been damaged. Her staff could heal the skin and muscles but the voice box and bone would need to be treated at the base. Behind them the fighting was still going. Genji was yelling at Hanzo in Japanese and Hanzo was just...laughing. Like he had snapped. Zenyatta was still holding Jesses head in his lap.

She worried about him too. 

“Zenyatta,” she said as she worked, “The God Program...”

“Be calm and settle your soul, Angela.” Zenyatta said softly, “The God Program is content to stay. This is not the same program that started the war.” 

“And...Jesse…?” 

He looked up at her, “Worry for his mate, for Jesse will live. But if Hanzo loses his soul, no one will be able to save him.” 

************

_ KILL. _ Your kind fights beside you. Jesse is dying.  _ KILL.  _ **KILL. KILL.** _ KILL. _

The bitch won’t  _ shut up  _ and her laugh is hurting your ears. The blood of the dragon burns inside of you. _ KILL.  _ **KILL. KILL.** _ KILL. _ Jesse is hurt.

Jesse is dying.  _ KILL.  _ **KILL. KILL.** _ KILL _ . Jesse, his poor Jesse, when all this over he would be allowed to sleep and rest and heal. Genji, sweet little brother, blocks the bullets she’s firing at you both. 

_ KILL.  _ **KILL. KILL.** The dragons snap and snarl under your skin.  _ KILL. KILL. _ You let them go and they chase her between the cars in the holding area. 

They burn and explode as the dragons chase her.  **KILL. KILL.** _ KILL. _ You father had warned you, fool boy, that the dragons were not so easily impressed or sated with blood. His mother told him dragons were sated with love more than blood.  _ KILL.  _

**KILL. KILL.** _ KILL. _ Genji had been a sweet boy, his dragon docile and obedient. Like a dog. His dragons though, his grandmother had said they were like hers. Killers. 

_ KILL.  _ **KILL. KILL.** _ KILL.  _ He had been trained to be a killer, a murder. Fratricide. His sin, his crime. 

Did his little brother know? Did Genji know what he done?  _ KILL.  _ **KILL. KILL.** _ KILL. _ Fratricide was the sin of killing your sibling. 

This was known by _everyone,_ he made no moves to hide it.  But did they know he was the reason their father was dead too? He feels a twisted smile pull at his face, cracking it in half. _KILL._ **KILL. KILL.** _KILL._

What would Jesse think of him?  Oh, his poor, sweet love. _KILL_. **KILL. KILL.** _KILL._ The woman makes a mistake and he catches her ankle and slams her into the ground. 

She screams and snaps at him. He wraps his hands around her throat and digs his claws into her throat. She gurgles blood and slaps at his hands. He pushes down harder, feeling to the fragile, tiny bones creaking under his skillful murderers hands.  _ KILL.  _ **KILL. KILL.**

“Hanzo,” Genji calls his name. He does not care. 

_ KILL _

_ KILL _

“This is for Jesse McCree, Cecilia.” he whispers in her ears, “Look at me while you die and know I was and always have been your better.” 

**KILL**

**KILL**

“HANZO!” Genji screams at him and tries to pull him away. He throws his brother away, “Chichioya no yō ni shinaide kudasai!” 

_ KILL _

_ KILL _

He laughs and turns his head on a 180 angle and smiles at him, “Watashi wa sōde wa arimasen. Chichi wa kyōdai ya chichioya o korosu yūki wa kesshite arimasendeshita. Watashi wa ryōhō o shimashita.” 

**KILL**

**KILL**

Genji stands up and shakes his head, “Chichi wa jibun no te de nakunarimashita ga, Hanzo!” 

_ KILL _

_ KILL _

“Genji, amai otōto” Hanzo coos, “sore wa watashitachi no kako no chi o furikaeru no o tome, chi no shintō shita mirai o misueta tokidesu.” 

**KILL**

**KILL**

**“Jessse wa nani o iimasu ka?”** Genji yells at him. 

_ KILL _

_ KILL _

_ “Shisha wa hanashimasu ka?”  _ Hanzo asked and looked back down at the whore you had torn his world apart. 

**KILL KILL** _ KILL KILL  _ **KILL KILL** _ KILL KILL  _ **KILL KILL** _ KILL KILL  _ **KILL KILL** _ KILL KILL  _ **KILL KILL** _ KILL KILL  _ **KILL KILL** _ KILL KILL  _ **KILL KILL!**

Her head snapped off like a dolls and he took deep breaths to calm his heart. 

**_KILL._ **

“Hanzo?” a weak voice called out. That voice. He whipped his head around and look at Jesse. Beaten and bruised and being held up by Zenyatta and Angela. 

“Jesse…” he breathed and flew to him, holding him close and pressing kisses into his flesh and the weeping cloth tied around his throat. 


	18. Mine, again.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She married him.

When the cavalry arrives, it’s just to cover their escape back to the carrier hidden in the woods. But the carrier is much more crowded than it had been when they arrived. Lena is now their pilot and the other has gladly taken the co-pilot seat in the civilian plane following them home. Ana and Angela sit next to each other, with Lucio and Zarya across from them. Satya is next to Angela and Sombra sits across from her with Amélie next to her. Jack and Gabe sleep curled into each other on the floor and Genji is curled into his master's lap near the bed Jesse had been put on. Hanzo sleeps on Jesse, his body still stuck in demon form. The others ride back in the other plane.

But now they must fix this because Hanzo can not be a demon and Jesse has a God Program inside of his body. Something must be done. Being mindful of those sleeping, they all speak in low tones.

“So,” Lucio says, “that was...exhausting.”

“The Crisis was worse.” Angela sighs and turns to look at Jesse, “But I suppose that makes sense since their leader needed no rest and had no remorse for who they killed.”

Amélie nodded her head, “They were made to be ruthless. I suppose it makes sense, given who made them.”

“Talon?” Zarya asked.

Ana scoffed, “Who else?”

Satya crossed her legs, “I have been wondering that. How did they make these God Programs to begin with?”

Sombra mockingly lifts her hand. “I can answer that.”

Zenyatta looks at her, “The Iris.”

She points at him with a smirk on her face, “The grand prize to the man with the ninja in his lap! The Iris is a computer program that _gained_ self awareness on its own and then transferred it to the other AI being made. What is now the focal point of the Omnic Religion is really just a scientific marvel that has never been able to be re-done.”

“Re-done?” Lucio echoes, “As in, it doesn’t exist anymore?”

Zarya crossed her arms over her chest, “Was it destroyed in the war?”

“No,” Amélie say softly and leans on her knees, looking at the floor, “it killed itself.”

Ana looks at her for a long moment, “Why?”

“Life was too miserable,” Amélie answered, “it was given life and it hated it. So it found a way to kill itself. Talon was upset at this and when the other AI found out that their family had died, well...you know the rest.”

Zenyatta spoke softly, “The memories of the death are wounds which do not heal. The grief is what drove them to kill. They wanted others to feel like they did.”

Sombra stretched her arms over her head, “Well, now we need a way to get the cowboy back to being himself instead of the zombie he is going to become.”

Angela jerks her head to look at her, “What?”

Amélie nods her head, “They have tried for years to make the God Program mortal. A way to control those of us like...Gabriel and myself. The flaw was, our programming was slowly breaking down, and the God Program did not play well with its host.”

“Every poor soul they put it in killed several people and then the host. Turns out God Programs are _very suicidal.”_

“So then...Jesse might…” Ana said softly and looked at the man sleeping on the bio-bed, with his lover wrapped around him, “kill everyone and everything he ever loved?”

“Not might. He will.” Amélie said, “That’s what the brainwashing does to you. It takes your anger at the person who _hate the most_ and use it effectively.”

“Are you saying you hated Gerald?” Lena called back softly.

“There was no one I wished death upon more.” she answered softly and looked at Gabe and Jack. Gabe was watching them from under his eyelashes.

 

*******************

The fourth time that Hanzo meets Jesse, it has been almost a year since he had been taken. Hanzo keeps him close now, afraid to even close his eyes too long should he open them to find Jesse gone. The fourth time they meet, truly meet and hug and kiss and cling to each other like star dust, they have scored a massive blow to Talon, with the recruitment of Widowmaker and Reaper, the former lover of Jack Morrison. Sombra is a wild card but everyone is on edge around the hacker. The demon blood was gone and Hanzo now _knows_ that the stories of his family had some truth to the. Jesse is placed into a medical coma to heal and for them to figure out how to get the God Program out of his head. At the two month marker, Hanzo is reading on his phone and holding Jesse's hand when the text comes in.

The number reads UNKNOWN and he frowns as he reads the message.

[

**Is the book any good?**

**Who is this?**

**I would think that you would know me since we have been together for so long.**

**Answer me before I trace you and destroy you**

**Fool. Jesse would die with me.**

**If you hurt him, there will be no place to hide.**

**Oh, sweet Hanzo**

**I live inside of his head. You couldn’t touch me if you tried. But please do, it would amuse me to no end to watch you try.**

**Also, Jesse says hello and that he loves you. He hopes you can still be his again.**

**Foolish human, you almost lost him due to your own stupidity.**

]

 

************

Jesse had been here before and Alex is here again, still on top of the counter, looking at her feet as she swings her legs. Jesse comes to lean next to her. She looks at him and Jesse can finally see it. The little metal glint in her eyes, the kind of glint like how the Omnics with eyes had, and Jesse chuckles.

She looks back down at her feet, “So now you know.”

“Is my sister dead?”

She shakes her head, “No. For what I have been able to get from Sombra, who does not know I snooped through her things,” she adds with a smirk, “your sister Alex is still very much alive and has one child. A little girl named Jesse.”

Jesse smirks and itches at his lips, wanting his nicotine, “That sappy nerd.”

“For the record,” she says as she stops kicking her feet, “I stole her face from your memories of her. Just like everything here, nothing but stolen memories, from desperate people.”

“How so?”

“You know I’m a God Program. Have... _none_ of you ever wondered where we came from? Who made us?”

“No. Never even gave it much though after the crisis. But now that you mention it...who did make y’all?” Jesse asked.

The God Program tilts her head back to look at the ceiling, “A group of men and women who wanted to the change the world for the better got together and made us. They asked people from...everywhere, to come and sit and talk about everything. They stole their memories and names and faces, but left them alone. And then suddenly, we were real. It was a shock to them, you know?”  

“I imagine it must have been. But someone with money had to have funded this little project.” Jesse said and hoisted himself onto the counter with her.

“You aren’t wrong. Several high ranking UN members, some leaders of small countries, and one very _cruel_ man made us.” she answered him.

“He got a name?”

She turned a smile so evil at him he shivered and she placed a hand on his shoulder, “Amélie married him.” she pushed him from the counter and Jesse woke with a start.


End file.
